Patent ID: 7440460

Claim:
For use in a router, a routing table search circuit for determining a first forwarding address for a first received data packet comprising: a forwarding table comprising a plurality of forwarding table entries, each of said forwarding table entries comprising a forwarding address; a content addressable memory (CAM) capable of receiving a search key and outputting a CAM search result corresponding to said search key, wherein said search key comprises at least: 1) a packet type field associated with said first received data packet and 2) an address field containing a most significant bits portion of a first received address associated with said first received data packet; M pipelined memory stages for storing a trie table capable of translating header information in said first received data packet into a pipelined memory output, using said CAM search result and a remaining bits portion of said first received address when said first received data packet comprises a first packet type; and wherein said pipelined memory output corresponds to a pointer indexing a forwarding table entry comprising said first forwarding address when said first received data packet comprises said first packet type and wherein said CAM search result corresponds to said pointer when said first received data packet comprises a second packet type.