Patent ID: 7245623
Filing Date: 2007-07-17
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. In a network device having a plurality of ports for receiving and sending network messages having a plurality of fields, a classification engine configured to examine the network messages for predefined criteria and to generate corresponding actions to be applied to network messages containing the predefined criteria, the classification engine comprising: a plurality of associative memories arranged into one or more stages, the associative memories configured with at least some of the predefined criteria; and a single, shared memory resource coupled to each of the plurality of associative memories of at least one stage, the shared memory resource configured with the actions to be applied to network messages, whereby two or more associative memories of the one or more stages are organized into a parallel bank that can process the same field of different network messages at substantially the same time and for each network message return one of the actions stored in the single, shared memory resource.