|
|
ControlPoint Architecture
ControlPoint Software Suite is based on a unique modular architecture that leverages the built-in services, extensibility, and open architecture of embedded Linux.
Standard sockets are used to interconnect the main architectural elements (generally Linux processes), which include:
ControlPoint Core
- Core Services is the main Linux process that manages communication between all of the system processes and exposes built-in Linux services (such as ARP and ping)
- Management Abstraction layer (MAL), which contains the definition and database of information, and retrieves the information, that gets presented uniformly to the user through any of the Management Agents
- Network Abstraction Layer (NAL), which defines a standard method for managing connections (route establishment, route deletion, forwarding database updates, etc.) that are presented to the protocols for routing, switching, and address resolution decisions
- Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), which interfaces to the chip API in a uniform, consistent, and well documented fashion, and exposes the general capabilities of the chip to the Core Services
Extensible Management Agents
- Web agent is the engine that supports web-based access to the system software. Multiple web clients are supported by the agent, and its XML-based architecture makes adding and modifying screens, or changing the look-and-feel of the interface a simple "webmaster" style task.
- CLI agent accesses the same information as the other management agents, providing a simple and efficient method for field engineers and techs to configure the system. Additional customer-specific CLIs can be added, or the baseline CLI can be modified, to preserve an OEM's particular CLI syntax and usage convention.
- SNMP agent contains a number of standard MIBs, and supports loading and linking customer-specific enterprise MIBs
Extensible Protocols
- NextHop L2 and L3 protocol stacks are linked through the NAL, and provide slow-path protocol processing with a broad and extensible feature set
- Additional protocol stacks can be run as simple Linux process, using sockets to communicate through the NAL to the ControlPoint Core. Additional stacks will provide support for topology discovery, application-specific congestion management, simplified ACL configuration, and other advanced features.
Extensible Silicon
- A common FocalPoint API provides support for all variants of the FocalPoint switch chip family. In addition, support for third-party silicon can be added through the integration of third-party APIs and related supporting modifications to the HAL, NAL, and MAL.
|
