The Switchcraft Family

Switchcraft is a robust, lean, high performance layer 2 services implementation for embedded OSes such as Linux, VxWorks® and VxWorks AE. Its core engine is responsible for establishing fast path switching between various network interfaces in the system, and is designed to take advantage of hardware acceleration provided by a custom ASIC, network processor or FPGA based systems. It is implemented as a component plug-in for Linux and VxWorks and requires no changes to the kernel or network device drivers. The suite comprises of a set of highly configurable, small-footprint components, including link aggregation, load-balancing, fail-over (LACP/ 802.3ad), port-security (802.1X) and various flavors of STP (Spanning Tree Protocol). Components that implement other IEEE 802.n standards including VLAN tagging, GVRP and IGMP snooping are currently under development. Please contact us for advance information regarding these products.

The Switchcraft Family comprises of:

  • Tech Specification

    Merlink - LACP and Link Aggregation

    Merlink, a member of the Switchcraft family of layer 2 protocol products, is a high performance implementation of managed link aggregation for embedded switching implementations in networking and industrial equipment. It enables multiple links to be aggregated together to form a link aggregation group that a MAC client can treat as a single higher-speed link ("fat pipe") with built-in fault tolerance. Merlink also enables aggregates to use custom distribution functions for load balancing and other application-specific features, including designating certain ports as fail-over ports. For automated management of aggregated links in highly interoperable manner, Merlink includes support for the IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) and the Marker protocol.

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  • Tech Specification

    X-Calibur - 802.1X

    X-Calibur is an embedded and highly interoperable implementation of the IEEE 802.1X protocol which provides secure and flexible authentication in wired and wireless switches. It adds access authentication services to a supplicant or an authenticator in any scenario where one can abstract out the notion of a “network access port”, such as authenticated Ethernet networks and wireless (WLAN) networks. It includes both an authenticator and supplication Port Access Entity (PAE) and is validated for standalone use and for use with Wired Equivalence Privacy (WEP) and Wireless Protected Access (WPA) mechanisms in WiFi® networks. X-Calibur's small footprint and extensive support for various authentication mechanisms are ideally suited for use in enterprise and infrastructure oriented wired and wireless switches, gateways and access points.

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  • Tech Specification

    Spantasmic - Spanning Trees

    Spantasmic is a flexible embedded implementation of the Layer 2 spanning tree protocol (STP) and enhancements for rapid recovery of connectivity (RSTP – IEEE 802.1W) and VLAN-sensitivity (MST – IEEE 802.1S). It enables interoperable network redundancy on networking and industrial equipment such as bridges and switches, or in embedded switching frameworks within specialized embedded applications. It also includes a bridging framework with built-in forwarding and an address resolution logic-based filtering database which can optionally stand-in for a switch fabric chipset implementing similar functionality. Seamless integration with native OS driver models and standard MIB capabilities for any SNMP agent make Spantasmic an excellent fit for managed embedded environments.

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