Patent ID: 8660118

Claim:
A system for address next hop scaling, the system comprising: a packet forwarding device including: a plurality of packet processors for performing packet forwarding operations; a memory associated with each packet processor, the memory for storing next hop bindings for the hosts, wherein an ingress packet processor and memory associated with the ingress packet processor are configured to relay to an egress packet processor separate from the ingress packet processor a packet whose next hop is connected to the egress packet processor and wherein the egress packet processor and its memory that receive the relayed packet are configured to perform a next hop lookup to supply a destination MAC address for the packet and forward the packet to the next hop; and wherein each memory stores a layer 3 host or layer 3 longest prefix match route table that maps IP address information to next hop information and a next hop table that maps the next hop information to layer 2 packet forwarding information.