A system for fault detection and reconfiguration of hardware based active networks

An experimental Active Network based on a PC running the Linux OS and operating as a router has been implemented. The PC carries a PCI-based FPGA board, which is the execution environment of the Active Applications. The users are able to send Active Packets and program dynamically the network by remote configuration of the target FPGA board. The FPGA can be reconfigured multiple times on-the-fly with several Active Applications (IP-cores). A fault detection module is permanently configured in one of the FPGAs of the PCI board. Its function is to monitor the Active Applications at run time and check the PCI bus transactions for violations of predefined rules. The fault detector module works as a "firewall" preventing the communication between the configured application and the host computer, if a violation is detected.