Patent ID: 7539772
Filing Date: 2009-05-26
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A packet processing method for a node of a data transfer network, said method comprising: receiving a data packet at a node of the data transfer network; selecting a forwarding table from a plurality of types of forwarding tables, said selecting being based on an attribute associated with the data packet and including determining whether a value of the attribute falls within a defined range of attribute values, the defined range of attribute values being defined by at least one changeable value-range parameter, and applying a transformation to the value of the attribute, the transformation mapping a plurality of values of the attribute to a table index value, wherein the plurality of values of the attribute are assigned to a same port and wherein the transformation is defined by a changeable value-transformation parameter; mapping the data packet to an output port of the node, said mapping utilizing the forwarding table selected by said selecting; and wherein the plurality of types of forwarding tables comprises the linear forwarding table and the random forwarding table, and wherein the linear forwarding table is located in a memory space by a linear-forwarding-table base address and a linear-forwarding-table mask, and a remaining portion of the memory space is assigned to the random forwarding table.