Description of the tutorial: Router design has a broad scope and involves several areas that are research disciplines in themselves, such as classification/lookups, internal switch architectures, queuing strategies and scheduling as well as software modularization and packet forwarding extensions. A large amount of research has been performed on specific parts of a router and numerous interesting results have been presented. In this tutorial we attempt to put some of these results into an overall system context.

Our goal with the tutorial is to give a broad understanding of the different components or modules composing a router. We will discuss current and future requirements on IP routers and challenges in meeting these requirements. We will also line out the latest research in specific areas of router architectures. In particular we will present the advances in modular decentralized architectural approaches.

The tutorial is divided into 6 sections according to the following:
* Introduction
* Packet Processing
* Switching Fabrics and Back planes
* Modular and Distributed Approaches
* Router Design and Network Processors
* Some case studies

Biographies: Dr. Markus Hidell received the M.S. and Licentiate of Technology degrees in telecommunication systems from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden, in 1992 and 1996, respectively. From 1996 to 1998, he held a position as researcher at the Department of Teleinformatics, KTH, performing research in the areas of protocol design, network design, and high-speed router architectures. In 1998, he co-founded Dynarc, a company that developed routers for optical metropolitan ring networks. At Dynarc, he held positions as Vice President of Engineering/Operations during 1998 to 2002. Since Oct 2002, he holds a position as guest lecturer at the Laboratory for Communication Networks (KTH). His main research interests are router architectures and network design. He has co-authored six patents in the area of communication networks.

Dr. Peter Sjödin received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Uppsala University, Sweden, in 1982 and 1991, respectively. From 1986 to 1998, he was at SICS, Kista, Sweden, where he was research manager of the Network Architectures laboratory and performed research in the areas of protocol design, protocol verification, real-time communication, network design, and high-speed router architectures. In 1998, he co-founded Dynarc, a company that developed routers for optical metropolitan ring networks. At Dynarc, he was Vice President of Research and Development from 1998 to 2002. Since Dec 2002, he is an Associate Professor at the Laboratory for Communication Networks. His current research interests include switch and router architectures, optical networking, and models and techniques for IP routing and service differentiation. He holds five patents in the area of fast lookups and network resource management.

Dr. Olof Hagsand received the M.S. degree in engineering physics from Uppsala University in 1986; the licenciate degree in computer science 1992 from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm; and the PhD degree in computer science in 1995, also from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Olof has a broad background in the datacommunication industry where he has worked with communication protocols at Telelogic AB, IP telephony at Ericsson and router architectures at Dynarc and Xelerated. Currently, Olof is employed as an associate and works as a lecturer in internetworking and conducts research in the area of router architectures and audiovisual communication.