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:
Feb. 25, 2003
Filed:
Oct. 20, 1998
Radia J. Perlman, Acton, MA (US);
Dah Ming Chiu, Acton, MA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Burlington, MA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus that constructs a “router database” and then uses the database to determine a longest match between a piece of target data, such as an address in a packet to be routed, and the database. The database contains a comparison table having a plurality of entries. In a first embodiment, each entry has up to k values, where 2<=k<=N, where N is a number of comparison values in the database. In a second embodiment, each entry has up to k−1 values. During operation, various ones of the comparison table entries are loaded and compared to the address to determine a longest matching prefix in the router database. The comparison can be done in parallel.