Patent ID: 7486672

Claim:
A router for interconnecting external devices coupled to said router, said router comprising: a switch fabric; and a plurality of routing nodes coupled to said switch fabric, wherein each of said plurality of routing nodes comprises: a trie tree search table for storing routing information associated with received variable length subnet masks, wherein said trie tree search table is comprised of a plurality of stages that are searched by N-bit address symbols derived from said received variable length subnet masks; and a control processor configured to generate said plurality of stages associated with said trie tree search table, wherein said control processor generates for each entry in a first one of said plurality of stages: i) an end flag indicating whether said each entry is a leaf or a branch; 2) a subnet flag indicating whether a subnet mask ends at said each entry; and 3) a masked flag indicating whether a subnet mask ending at said each entry ends on a boundary of an N-bit address symbol associated with said each entry.