Control and Data planes in a router

Every now and then I feel the need to write a very basic article, explaining the foundations and getting the terminology straight. Today I’m trying to explain the control and data planes in a router (or a layer-3 switch, depending on your marketing bias). Your opinions, fixes, corrections and all other comments are most welcome.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

YES YES YES! There should be more of these articles coming. There are more than CCIEs reading here.

netadminion said...

Hi; as always this article is much appreciated. I don't mean to be nitpicking here but shouldn't the following line be corrected?

"They can pre-compute the actual forwarding data for every destination and store them in the forwarding table that can be directly used by the CONTROL plane."

Ivan Pepelnjak said...

@Anonymous: thanks for the heads-up. I'll do my best :)

@Netadminion: You're absolutely right. Thanks for the correction, I've fixed the text.

Ivan Pepelnjak, CCIE#1354, is the chief technology advisor for NIL Data Communications. He has been designing and implementing large-scale data communications networks as well as teaching and writing books about advanced technologies since 1990. See his full profile, contact him or follow @ioshints on Twitter.