APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ROUTING DATA PACKETS THROUGH A COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK

摘要

A method and apparatus (25) for determining the next router (25, 26, 27, 28) that a data packet is transmitted to on its way to a destination host (33-35) by traversing a routing table (41) using a hardware search engine (46) and a unique search tree (Fig. 16). The step of traversing each node in the search tree (Fig. 16) takes only one memory cycle, decreasing in half the time it takes to search a routing table (41) and thus forward data packets on a system of computer networks (8). This is accomplished by storing the decision bit for each node in its parent node rather than in the node itself. The apparatus may use a hardware search engine (46) to search the routing table (41).