Patent ID: 7606236

Claim:
A method implemented by a network processor comprising: distributing a forwarding information base (FIB) across a plurality of FIB portions hosted by at least one memory store of the network processor; storing a plurality of primary FIB entries including a first FIB entry in a first FIB portion; storing a plurality of secondary FIB entries including a second FIB entry in other FIB portions including a second FIB portion, each secondary FIB entry being a member of a linked list having a first link comprising one of the primary FIB entries in the first FIB portion; locating the primary FIB entries using a hash-based indexing scheme; locating the first FIB entry based at least in part upon header information of a received packet; locating the second FIB entry based at least in part on linking information obtained from the first FIB entry; retrieving next hop information for the received packet from the second FIB entry; defining a depth level threshold specifying a limit of a number of the secondary FIB entries that may be processed using a first execution thread of the network processor; and employing a second execution thread of the network processor to handle processing of the secondary FIB entries having a depth level that exceeds the depth level threshold.