Bay Networks, Inc.

David A Head

Suryanarayan Ramamurthy

David M Brady

Ahmad Esmaeili

A search key having a first length is presented to a universal hashing process. The search key is hashed using a universal hash function to generate a bucket ID having a second length, smaller than the first length. The bucket ID is used to address a table stored in a computer readable medium and a pointer is retrieved from an associated storage location. The pointer is used to index a hash bucket containing one or more entries, each of which can be compared to the search key to determine whether any of the entries match the search key. For the case where the method is used in a Ethernet switch, the search key may comprise a virtual LAN identification and media access control address. The table is made up of number of hash buckets, each of which may have one or more entries. New entries are stored in one of the hash buckets according to the universal hash function so long as no overflows of any hash bucket would be created. If a bucket overflow would result from the storing operation, a new hash function is automatically selected so that no hash bucket overflows will result when the new entry is stored in a new table.

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

David A Head