Requirement
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Overview
Back in 2004, I deployed a 8Mbps ATM circuit that connected an airline company hub site. Traffic growth increased amazingly since then! In 2020, what does SOHO (Small Office, Home Office) mean nowadays? In our use case we will consider a SOHO connected at 1GE link. This is for example:
- Primary schools, Secondary schools
- Small R&E institution spoke sites
- Home office (especially considering the COVID context)
- Small company spoke agencies
Article objective
In this article we will describe how to build a carrier grade SOHO router (aka CPE) from an actual real platform. In this example let me share with you my personal story and introduce you my SOHO hardware that I'm using at home. It is compliant with the requirements implied by the use cases listed above:
Requirements
- requirement #0: n×1GE capable, ISP uplink is 1GE
- requirement #1: completely silent, the box can be moved to crowded room
- requirement #2: small power consumption, as it is meant to run 24x7. (I'm paying the bill !
)
- requirement #3: Run 64-bit linux
- requirement #4: native support of DPDK
Diagrams
[ #001 ] - Cookbook
Discussion
Conclusion
In this 1st article you:
- had a brief description hardware platform suitable for SOHO
- had a description of the SOHO use case in 2020
- get a rationale on why this platform has been chosen
- had a brief description of the selected Operating System
- get a rationale on why this OS has been chosen
RARE validated design: [ SOHO #001 ] - key take-away
- RARE/FreeRouter is a strong candidate for SOHO with multiple dataplane support solution.
If you are a company you run RARE/freeRouter with a versatile P4 switch such as APS® Networks BF2556X-1T or WEDGE, but as a SOHO with a small budget you can run it with a DPDK dataplane and for older hardware you still have the possibility run it with a pure software dataplane
- RARE/freeRouter is the first element at the very edge of the MPLS seamless architecture
End to end MPLS is now possible for the Service provider at an affordable price
- RARE/freeRouter design can coexist with Virtualisation technology
CPU extension such as VT-x/AMD-V, VT-D/AMD-Vi, VT-c can provide coexistence between RARE/freeRouter and a small amount of storage and compute node. (Such as micro-K8/docker)
In the next article we will start our journey in creating a carrier grade CPE using the platform above.