Paper Title
Practical Implementation of Network Switch on FPGA
Abstract
A network switch is a hardware device, which is used for device communication within a network. It uses a packet-switching mechanism to receive and transmit data to the target device. Network switches contain multiple ports that use media access control (MAC) address for transmitting data at the data link layer (layer 2) of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. This research aims to design a network switch on FPGA to improve the efficiency of the system. The system has four main blocks that are Input FIFO (First In, First Out), Switch Fabric, Output FIFO, and MAC IP. The blocks perform different tasks. Once the system was designed, the simulation was used to show whether the design can work and give better accuracy. Verilog was used to design and implement the entire system. Zedboard by Digilent tested the system to ensure that it worked. FMC ethernet card accurately extended the number of ethernet ports. The simulation test showed that the system could work effectively. It shows how the current is going to move from one port to the next. The paper presented a practical implementation of the Network Switch on FPGA at an operating frequency of 125MHz for the whole design.
Keywords - FPGA, Network Switch, Switch Fabric, Layer 2, MAC IP, Verilog.