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:
Nov. 13, 2012
Filed:
Nov. 30, 2010
Rajesh Jagannathan, Oakland, CA (US);
Brian Alleyne, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Ramanathan Lakshmikanthan, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Rajesh Jagannathan, Oakland, CA (US);
Brian Alleyne, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Ramanathan Lakshmikanthan, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Telefonaktiebolaget L M Ericsson (publ), Stockholm, SE;
Abstract
Embodiments of the invention include a method performed in a media access control (MAC) forwarding control module within a network element for looking up a MAC address and interface (I/F) identifier pair (MAC-I/F pair) from a MAC forwarding data structure that comprises a first tier data structure and a plurality of second tier data structures. The MAC forwarding data structure utilizes compressed keys to index each of the plurality second tier data structures. The compressed key is generated with a desired MAC address and a mask bit list that corresponds with enough bit positions such that all MAC addresses in second tier data structure can be uniquely addressed with just the values of each MAC address in the bit positions listed. As such, the MAC forwarding data structure is constructed so that the total cost of a lookup with the compressed key technique is deterministic and, therefore, O(1).