Communications Techview: Network Processing Forum Unveils Four New SIAs

More and more network equipment designers are selecting programmable network processors or network processor units (NPUs) for new designs of routers, switches, and other high-speed networking equipment. One of the key factors supporting the migration to NPUs has been the work of the Network Processing Forum (NPF).

This consortium of networking semiconductor, software, and OEM companies is working to accelerate the adoption of NPU technologies by developing and implementing network processing standards, interfaces, and benchmarks. It recently announced the availability of four new software implementation agreements (SIAs) to enable the reuse of software interfaces across multiple networking platforms. Broad implementation of these application programming interfaces (APIs) by network vendors should accelerate the adoption of NPU technologies, as well as lower costs and speed products to market.

The new SIAs are:

• MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) Forwarding Service Application Programming Interfaces with Diffserv and TE Extensions
• IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) Unicast Forwarding Service API
• Packet Handler API
• Version 2 of the Software API conventions

All four SIAs are available for free on the NPF Web site.