Patent ID: 7426572

Claim:
A routing component of a router comprising: a first interface to communicate data with a network; a second interface to communicate data to a second routing component using a switch internal to the router, wherein the first interface and the second interface are integrated within a single integrated circuit; an embedded memory within the integrated circuit; a memory interface to couple the integrated circuit to an external memory; and at least one control unit that receives data from the network via the first interface and accesses a forwarding table to determine a network destination for the data received from the network; wherein the control unit buffers the data from the network using the embedded memory internal to the integrated circuit when the destination for the data from the network requires forwarding the data to the second routing component of the router as inbound data using the switch, and wherein the control unit buffers the data from the network in the external memory when the destination for the data from the network requires forwarding the data received from the network back to the network as outbound data via the first interface.