Active networking in environments built to support link rates up to several gigabits per second poses many challenges. One such challenge is that the memory bandwidth and individual processing power of the router's microprocessors limit the total available processing power of a router. In this paper, we identify and describe three key components, which promise a high performance active network solution. This solution implements the key features typical to active networking, such as automatic protocol deployment and application specific processing, and it is suitable for a gigabit environment. First, we describe the hardware of the Active Network Node (ANN), a scalable, high performance platform based on off-the-shelf CPUs connected to a gigabit ATM switch backplane. Second, we introduce the ANN's modular, extensible and highly efficient operating system (NodeOS). Third, we describe an Execution Environment running on top of the NodeOS, which implements a novel large-scale active networ...

This paper will appear in the feature topic issue of the IEEE Communications Magazine, Vol. 14, No. 2, February 1997. 1 Introduction Communication software and distributed services for nextgeneration applications must be reliable, efficient, flexible, and extensible. For instance, applications like personal communication systems (PCS), real-time market data feeds, and flight reservation systems must be highly available and scalable to meet their stringent reliability and performance demands. In addition, these applications must be flexible and extensible to cope with their inherent complexity and to respond rapidly to changing application requirements that span a wide range of media types and access patterns. These requirements motivate the use of the Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker Architecture (OMG CORBA) [1, 2]. CORBA is an open standard for distributed object computing. It defines a set of components that allow client applications to invoke