| 摘要 |
An improved packet forwarding arrangement for making quick and efficient next hop determinations through the creation and exchange of router-unique tags used as an index into a novel database of route information. The improved packet forwarding system operates independently of connectionless network layer protocols currently exiting in the router, utilizing an independent tag exchange protocol to advertise the locally-unique tags to neighboring routers, and a packet data link header to carry the tags. Central to the packet forwarding system is a fast look-up tag database (TDB) containing a locally-unique tag and one or more remote tags local to neighboring routers, all of which are associated with predetermined groups of destination addresses such as destination address prefixes. The table look-up data structure of the TDB as well as the small, fixed-length tags of the present invention enable the packet forwarding system to quickly and efficiently index through the TDB to obtain the necessary information to make next hop determinations, thereby significantly reducing the overhead associated with packet forwarding. An existing forwarding information database (FIDB) modified to include the same tags is also provided for communicating with nodes not supporting the present invention.
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