Patent ID: 7277426
Filing Date: 2007-10-02
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A network switch comprising: ingress ports and egress ports; a plurality of tables on a storage medium on the network switch storing forwarding decisions for data packets forwarded from ingress ports to egress ports, a number of the tables each being separately indexed by a different index computed from a key, each indexed location storing a swap count, the swap count providing an indication of the congestion level of the indexed location; insert logic on the network switch which, upon detecting that all locations identified by the computed indexes are used, inserts a new entry by overwriting the current entry stored in the indexed location storing the lowest swap count and updates the swap counts in each of the indexed locations; and control on the network switch that forwards data packets to the egress ports according to the forwarding decisions stored in the plurality of tables on the storage medium on the network switch.