Authors : Hussain Muhammad Asdar , Khan M. Imran and Khan Zulfiqar
Abstract: Cartesian routing is a novel approach developed to route the packets with minimal state information (L. Hughes, et al., 2000). Algorithms for Cartesian routers have been developed and communication protocols for maintaining Unicast, Multicast and Broadcast communication in Cartesian network have been designed (L. Hughes, et al., 2000; M. Barnett, et al., 1988; Larry Hughes, 2002 and Larry Hughes and Haiyu Song). Tools are required, which may help testing of these routing protocols in real Cartesian network environment. Since Cartesian routers are not available yet, to fulfill the need of a testing tool to check the performance of the protocols, a digital logic based switching mechanism for a PC based Cartesian routed network is being proposed in this study. Usually PCs are supplied with only a single serial port for peripheral communicating devices. Therefore, to find a solution to this problem, a piece of hardware is needed not only to switch the outbound data for more than one outgoing directions but also to handle randomly arriving incoming serial byte-streams independently preventing any possible data loss. Routing algorithms implemented in software shall be responsible for address comparison and routing decisions made on any incoming/outgoing packet. Once Cartesian routing codes using PCs are developed, a Cartesian network can be formed to serve as a valuable tool for the testing of the Cartesian routing protocols.
Hussain Muhammad Asdar , Khan M. Imran and Khan Zulfiqar , 2005. Design of a Digital Switching Mechanism for PC Based Cartesian Routed Networks . Asian Journal of Information Technology, 4: 391-398.