A Pipelined IP Address Lookup Module for 100 Gbps Line Rates and beyond

New Internet services and technologies call for higher packet switching capacities in the core network. Thus, a performance bottleneck arises at the backbone routers, as forwarding of Internet Protocol (IP) packets requires to search the most specific entry in a forwarding table that contains up to several hundred thousand address prefixes. The Tree Bitmap algorithm provides a well-balanced solution in respect of storage needs as well as of search and update complexity. In this paper, we present a pipelined lookup module based on this algorithm, which allows for an easy adaption to diverse protocol and hardware constraints. We determined the pipelining degree required to achieve the throughput for a 100 Gbps router line card by analyzing a representative sub-unit for various configured sizes. The module supports IPv4 and IPv6 configurations providing this throughput, as we determined the performance of our design to achieve a processing rate of 178 million packets per second.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IFIP
• Authors: Domenic Teuchert, Simon Hauger
• Keywords: Communications, IFIP 2009, Packet Switching Capacities, Pipelined Lookup Module, Tree Bitmap Algorithm