Patent ID: 7792115

Claim:
A method for processing frames, comprising: (a) receiving a frame at a port of a switch element; (b) simultaneously comparing incoming frame information with a plurality of fields of an alias cache entry from among a plurality of alias cache entries that are configured by a switch element processor; wherein the alias cache entry includes a control word based on which the frame is processed by the switch element; and wherein the control word includes a word depth field for identifying which word in the frame is compared to the alias cache entry field, and a programmed action code that determines an action based on the comparison to route the frame to a destination based on a matching alias cache entry, discard the frame, set a status for inspecting the frame and route the frame based on a standard addressing scheme; (c) performing a word depth match by comparing incoming frame word depth with a programmed word depth of the alias cache entry; and (d) routing the frame based on the action code of the alias cache entry.