Cisco Technology, Inc.

Shahin Habibi

David Delano Ward

Mohammed Ismael Tatar

David Richard Barach

Naader Hasani

Sreedhar Ravipalli

Shishir Gupta

One embodiment performs longest prefix matching operations in one or more different manners that provides packet processing and/or memory efficiencies in the processing of packets. In one embodiment, a packet switching device determines a set of one or more mask lengths of a particular conforming entry of a multibit trie or other data structure that matches a particular address of a packet via a lookup operation in a mask length data structure. A conforming entry refers to an entry which has less than or equal to a maximum number of different prefix lengths, with this maximum number corresponding to the maximum number of prefix lengths which can be searched in parallel in the address space for a longest matching prefix by the implementing hardware. The packet switching device then performs corresponding hash table lookup operation(s) in parallel in determining an overall longest matching prefix for the particular address.

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Menlo Park, CA, United States of America

Shahin Habibi