Patent ID: 7466698

Claim:
A network node having a plurality of communication ports, the network node comprising: an interface configuration mechanism operable to receive user commands, the user commands comprising: an interface class configuration command that configures at least in part a Layer 3 (L3) interface class in terms of an L3 interface class identifier and one or more packet forwarding rules; a first interface configuration command that configures at least in part a first L3 interface for a specified one of the plurality of communication ports and non-exclusively assigns the L3 interface class identifier to the first L3 interface; a second interface configuration command that configures at least in part a second L3 interface for a specified one of the plurality of communication ports and non-exclusively assigns the L3 interface class identifier to the second L3 interface; wherein the first and second L3 interfaces specify a port identifier, a media type, an IP address, and an IP subnet mask; a packet forwarding mechanism operable to apply the one or more packet forwarding rules, which are associated with the L3 interface class identifier, to packets arriving at the first and second L3 interfaces, the packet forwarding mechanism comprising a first hardware lookup table having a plurality of entries, some of said entries corresponding to interface class configuration commands and being identified by L3 interface class identifiers (IDs) and other of said entries corresponding to interface configuration commands and being identified by L3 interface IDs, wherein said entries in the first hardware lookup table include the respective L3 interface class IDs and L3 interface IDs and data representative of their respective packet forwarding rules; and a second hardware lookup table having a plurality of entries, each entry corresponding to an interface configuration command and operable to store an L3 interface class identifier in association with at least a VLAN ID.