Performance Evaluation of a PC-based Active Router and Analysis of an Active Secure FTP Application

This paper presents the performance evaluation of a PC-based active router, in terms of packet loss within the router. The architecture of the active router consists of two parts: a software part that is implemented using two Linux hosts and a hardware part that contains a PCI-based FPGA (field programmable gate array) board. A description of the modules comprising the router is given and then the method used to gather the performance evaluation data is described. The main sources for the CPU cycles consumption in the router are highlighted and a method for minimising the packet loss is applied. An example of the active network approach is given by implementing an active secure FTP application. Its performance is compared to that of passive FTP. The performance evaluation of the active secure FTP application reveals several bottlenecks, especially in the hardware extension of the active router