Patent ID: 7308505

Claim:
A packet processing method for a node of a data transfer network, said method comprising: receiving a data packet at a node of the data transfer network; selecting a forwarding table from a plurality of types of forwarding tables, said selecting being based on an attribute associated with the data packet; mapping the data packet to an output port of the node, said mapping utilizing the forwarding table selected by said selecting; wherein the plurality of types of forwarding tables comprises at least some of a linear forwarding table, a random forwarding table and a content-addressable memory forwarding table; and wherein the plurality of types of forwarding tables comprises the linear forwarding table and the random forwarding table, and wherein the linear forwarding table is located in a memory space by a linear-forwarding-table base address and a linear-forwarding-table mask, and a remaining portion of the memory space is assigned to the random forwarding table.