The total number of states in the Arbiter’s control unit for BlazeRouter-M has reached 69 states. As far as Finite State Machines go, this diagram (located –> https://github.com/koru/BlazeRouter_M/tree/master/docs) isn’t your traditional looking Moore machine (rather complex), but nevertheless the design is contingent on a synchronous clock, and each state determines the next output. Hopefully this number will either stay at 69 or shrink. BlazeRouter-S has fewer states due to the lack of a scheduling resources-by-reserving mechanism. The incoming data packets are “scheduled” but not in the traditional sense. It’s more of a FIFO operation where the FSM is continuously checking each port direction, and upon arrival of a data packet, if memory permits (only 16 slots), the data packet will reside in RAM until it’s pushed out of the router and on to its next hop.
Our tests will essentially be a face-off between BlazeRouter-M (w/Resource Reservation) vs. BlazeRouter-S (w/o Resource Reservation) and determine various metrics that will favor one over the other depending on the level of QoS required. This is the meat of my thesis.
Stay Tuned.
kor
