Address Lookup Solutions for Gigabit Switch/router

The Internet continuous growth and its widespread applications require adequate solutions for scaling routing performance. A number of approaches have been recently proposed by different vendors to prepare for the next generation Internet, and new router architectures, capable of processing millions of packets per second, are starting to appear. The efficient processing of IP addresses in such high performance internetworking equipment is one of the most challenging problems to solve. This paper focuses on the available technological solutions for the implementation of the address lookup unit in new generation IP switches and routers. Address lookup algorithms are discussed, and two fast, cheap and flexible hardware-assisted implementations are proposed and evaluated.