Ascend Communications, Inc.

Marlon Gunderson

Clark Bremer

Christine E Severns

A method and apparatus for determining the next router that a data packet is transmitted to on its way to a destination host by traversing a routing table using a hardware search engine and a unique search tree. The step of traversing each node in the search tree takes only one memory cycle, decreasing in half the time it takes to search a routing table and thus forward data packets on a system of computer networks. 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 to search the routing table.

Growing community of inventors

Saint Paul, MN, United States of America

Marlon Gunderson