Patent ID: 7007101

Claim:
A method of forwarding information packets operating on a multiple element computer having primary and secondary computing elements, said method comprising steps of: providing a multiple element computing system having a primary computing element and a secondary computing element in operative communication with each other; building a table comprised of a plurality of entries with addresses associated therewith wherein said entries are organized hierarchically according to an LC-Trie compression algorithm operating on said addresses; receiving an information packet within said computer system wherein said information packet has a destination address associated therewith; searching said table using an LC-Trie search algorithm to find a match between said address of an entry in said table and said destination address of said information packet; transmitting said information packet to a forwarding address associated with said address of said matching entry; wherein said steps of said method are performed by a forwarding table manager application running on said primary and said secondary computing elements; wherein said table comprises an LC-Trie search table and a next-hop table associated together, wherein said LC-Trie search table comprises information from said LC-Trie compression algorithm and wherein said next-hop table comprises information necessary to transmit said information packet to said forwarding address associated with said matching entry; wherein said LC-Trie search table entries comprise a branching factor, a skip value, and an LC-Trie/Next-Hop Offset generated for each of said plurality of entries by said LC-Trie compression algorithm during said building step; and wherein said next-hop table entries comprise said address field containing said IP address of said matching entry identified in said searching step, and an opaque data field for storing specialized packet processing information.