Scalable IP Lookup for Programmable Routers

Abstract— Continuing growth in optical link speeds places increasing demands on the performance of Internet routers, while deployment of embedded and distributed network services imposes new demands for flexibility and programmability. IP address lookup has become a significant performance bottleneck for the highest performance routers. Amid the vast array of academic and commercial solutions to the problem, few achieve a favorable balance of performance, efficiency, and cost. New commercial products utilize Content Addressable Memory (CAM) devices to achieve high lookup speeds at an exhorbitantly high hardware cost with limited flexibility. In contrast, this paper describes an efficient, scalable lookup engine design, able to achieve highperformance with the use of a small portion of a reconfigurable logic device and a commodity Random Access Memory (RAM) device. The Fast Internet Protocol Lookup (FIPL) engine is an implementation of Eatherton and Dittia’s previously unpubli...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: David E. Taylor, John W. Lockwood, Todd S. Sproull, Jonathan S. Turner, David Parlour
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2002, IP Address Lookup, Lookup, Performance