A parallel IP-address forwarding approach based on partitioned lookup table techniques

Abstract

As traffic on the Internet has increased exponentially, it is vital that Internet routers handle the received packets faster. When a router receives a packet, it has to make a decision where to send it next. To forward an IP packet, the routers need to lookup the destination address of the received packet in the forwarding table, implement forwarding algorithms, then forward the packet to the appropriate next hop or outgoing port. We discuss a parallel approach that combines an IP packet forwarding technique based on a partitioned lookup table with linear search on prefix lengths, binary search on prefix lengths, and LC (level-compressed) trie. Simulation results show that the proposed partition schemes speeds up the IP address lookup process.