ADDRESSABLE, HIGH SPEED COUNTER ARRAY

摘要

A method and apparatus are disclosed for maintaining operational and statistical information in a high speed network switch (10) for each of a plurality of supported connections. A high speed array (70) is provided whic h includes a plurality of high speed registers for each of a plurality of connections supported by the switch. Upon receipt of a cell/frame, a connection identifier is generated to identify the connection within the network switch and the connection identifier stored in an index register (72 ). The connection identifier stored within the index is used to select a plurality of registers within the high speed register array of registers pertaining to the specified connection. Information pertaining to each received cell/frame is generated upon receipt of the cell or retrieved from the respective cell header and is employed to generate an operand for each o f the plurality of registers addressed by the connection identifier.