Tutorial: Building Gigabit-rate Routers with the NetFPGA

Date: Conference was on Friday, September 05, 2008
Time: 09:00-17:30
The registration desk opens at 8:30
Location: Brno University of Technology, Laboratory Room L314

The NetFPGA tutorial was really great event. A slides from the tutorial: PPT, PDF, HTML.

An open platform called the NetFPGA has been developed at Stanford University. The NetFPGA platform enables researchers and instructors to build high-speed, hardware-accelerated networking systems. The platform can be used in the classroom to teach students how to build Ethernet switches and Internet Protocol (IP) routers using hardware rather than software. The platform can be used by researchers to prototype advanced services for next-generation networks.

By using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), the NetFPGA enables new types of packet routing circuits to be implemented and detailed measurements of network traffic to be obtained. During the tutorial, we will use the NetFPGA to determine the amount of memory needed to buffer TCP/IP data streaming through the Gigabit/second router. Hardware circuits within the NetFPGA will be implemented to measure and plot the occupancy of buffers. Circuits will be downloaded into reconfigurable hardware and tested with live, streaming Internet video traffic.

This full-day hands-on tutorial will be held in a classroom or laboratory equipped with ten PCs with NetFPGA hardware.