The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 04, 2000
Filed:
Mar. 20, 1997
George Varghese, St. Louis, MO (US);
Srinivasan Venkatachary, University City, MO (US);
Washington University, St. Louis, MO (US);
Abstract
Many network protocols, including the Internet, have addresses that are structured hierarchically. The hierarchy is expressed by an address prefix P that represents all addresses in the given hierarchical level that starts with prefix P. The hierarchy is not strict and can be overridden by more inclusive hierarchies. This is achieved by having network routers find the longest prefix that matches a destination address in a message. The disclosed invention describes a method and apparatus for implementing controlled expansion: for expanding a set of prefixes into an equivalent (possibly larger) set of prefixes that have a smaller set of prefix lengths. The new set of prefixes can then be looked up significantly faster using any technique whose speed improves by reducing the number of prefix lengths. Our invention also incorporates fast techniques to insert and delete new prefixes, and a technique of pointer hoisting to halve the memory READs needed for trie search. Our solution to longest matching prefix also applies to other routing protocols such as OSI Routing, call routing in telephone networks, and to string matching problems.