Scalable IP Lookups using Shape Graphs

—Recently, there has been much renewed interest in developing compact data structures for packet processing functions such as longest prefix-match for IP lookups. This has been motivated by several factors: (1) The advent of 100Gbps interfaces necessitating correspondingly fast packet processing algorithms with a compact memory footprint; (2) network virtualization leading to virtualization of physical router platforms making it critical to reduce high-speed memory needs per virtual router; (3) software routers built on multi-core processors requiring the use of compact data-structures that fit in on-chip caches for good performance. In this paper, we revisit this issue of developing compact data structures for key packet-processing functions. We develop a new data structure, called the shape graph, that significantly compacts the trie data-structure used for IP lookups. We accomplish this by identifying considerable structural similarities in IP lookup tries that have not previou...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICNP
• Authors: Haoyu Song, Murali S. Kodialam, Fang Hao, T. V. Lakshman
• Keywords: Compact Data Structures, Data Structure, ICNP 2009, Ip Lookups, Network Protocols