Layer-3 switching using virtual network ports

Switching techniques are capable of providing scalable forwarding performance, traffic engineering and quality of service, which are necessary for the next-generation Internet. Switching techniques achieve this by forwarding packets below the network layer, setting up aggregated flows, and laying explicit routes. The proposed framework improves on the current switching techniques. A virtual network port provides a conduit below layer-3 to network ports on remote nodes. It eliminates the need for explicit stack operations and packet fragmentation. It has active controls that allow processing of packets flowing through. We feel that it is conceptually simpler and has better semantics than the other techniques. In this paper we describe an implementation of the framework