Patent ID: 6553029
Filing Date: 2003-04-22
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A method of distributing data packets between one or more physical incoming ports and one or more physical outgoing ports, said method comprising:(a) receiving said packets from one or more of said incoming ports, each one of said packets containing a source address and a destination address; (b) providing an address look-up table for storing source addresses, source contexts associated with respective source addresses, destination addresses, and destination contexts associated with respective destination addresses, wherein said source contexts are respectively representative of either a particular one of said physical incoming ports or an aggregated grouping of said physical incoming ports and said destination contexts are respectively representative of either a particular one of said physical outgoing ports or an aggregated grouping of said physical outgoing ports; (c) providing a distribution table for storing, for each one of said aggregated groupings of said physical outgoing ports, a corresponding aggregated group of identifiers of particular ones of said physical outgoing ports; (d) for each one of said received packets: (i) extracting said source and destination addresses from said one of said received packets; (ii) searching said address look-up table for source and destination addresses corresponding to said extracted source and destination addresses; (iii) if said address look-up table contains source and destination addresses corresponding to said extracted source and destination addresses, retrieving from said address look-up table said source and destination contexts associated with respective extracted source and destination addresses; (iv) if said address look-up table does not contain the source address corresponding to said extracted source address, deriving a source context corresponding to said extracted source address and storing said extracted source address in said address look-up table together with said derived source context; (vi) if said retrieved destination address context is representative of a particular one of said physical outgoing ports, queuing said one of said received packets for outgoing transmission on said particular one of said physical outgoing ports; and, (vi) if said retrieved destination address context is representative of an aggregated grouping of said physical outgoing ports, retrieving from said distribution table said identifiers for said particular ones of said physical outgoing ports corresponding to said aggregated grouping of which said retrieved destination address context is representative, and queuing said one of said received packets for outgoing transmission on said particular ones of said physical outgoing ports corresponding to said aggregated grouping of which said retrieved destination address context is representative.