Master routers are the most powerful and expensive type of router used in large computer networks. They manage data flow and communicate with other routers using BGP. The market is limited to ISPs and universities, with Cisco and Juniper Networks dominating.
A master router is a very powerful type of computer router used in large computer networks. It is the fastest, most powerful and most expensive class of router available. A major router sits at the heart of a network and manages the flow of data packets within the network, often relying on minor routers for connectivity.
In the world of routers, not all machines are created equal. While all types of routers have the same basic function of directing the flow of data packets, the number of packets a router must process at once depends on where and how the device is being used. Consumer-grade routers used to connect many homes and small offices to the Internet need to handle only a fraction of the data that a router in a large corporation or Internet Service Provider (ISP) needs to handle. As a result, routers vary greatly in size, power, and cost.
Very large computer networks commonly use a hierarchy of routers. At the top of this hierarchy are the main routers, the fastest and most powerful class. A single core router can cost as much as a high-end sports car and is capable of processing millions of packets per second. It is typically found in the “middle” of very large networks and sends and receives packets to lower classes of routers, such as edge routers, which sit at the edge of a network and transfer packets to other networks. These routers can communicate with each other using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) and can share information about the best routes to take or network destinations that have become unreachable.
Early incarnations of the main router contained a “global routing table,” a database containing virtually every possible route a given packet could take to reach its destination. These routers, therefore, were considered the core or backbone of the Internet and were an essential component of the early architecture of the Internet. As the Internet grew, however, even the most advanced router couldn’t keep up with the number of possible routes. Large networks have been broken up into smaller units known as autonomous systems (AS). The modern core router still maintains a large routing table; the scope of this table is limited to the AS rather than the Internet as a whole, however, rendering the concept of the “core” Internet largely obsolete.
Due to their cost, the core router market is largely limited to ISPs and a few large institutions such as universities. There were once several companies supplying core routers, but the end of the dot-com boom coupled with a series of Cisco Systems® acquisitions has narrowed the market down to just two: Cisco®, which controls most of the market, and Juniper Networks® . The two companies have played a constant leapfrog game since the early 2000s, and both now produce routers that can handle massive amounts of data.
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