Hierarchical Broadcast Ring Architecture for High-Speed Ethernet Networks

Recently, Ethernet technology has received a lot of attention for large area networks as well as local area networks (LANs) due to its economical advantage. However, the Ethernet technology has scalability issues when it is applied to large area networks. In this paper, we present hierarchical broadcast ring architecture that provides scalability to high-speed Ethernet networks. The proposed Ethernet switch-based network architecture adopts mechanisms of IP router-based networks. The logical ring topology of the architecture provides the broadcast service without a broadcast storm problem. A shortest path link-state routing is used for data forwarding for high link utilization. Furthermore, the hierarchical proxy ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) scheme and an aggregation scheme of IP addresses are proposed to reduce the number of broadcast frames and the forwarding table size. As a result, the hierarchical broadcast ring architecture can support millions of hosts with a high-speed Ethernet network. The proposed architecture maintains the simple and efficient management and operation of the Ethernet network for large area networks.