Patent ID: 8542686

Claim:
A method of routing Ethernet frames between ports of an Ethernet bridge device, the method comprising the steps of: defining a routing table having a plurality of routing columns, each column having a plurality of entries, and each entry in a column having a unique index value; defining respective hash functions for the routing columns; receiving incoming address information from a port of the Ethernet bridge device; for each routing column: calculating a hash value from the incoming address information and the hash function defined for the column; determining if an entry having an index value equal to such a calculated hash value is empty; for those routing columns having such an empty entry: determining a usage value based upon the number of entries in the column in which data are stored; and storing address and port information in the empty entry of the routing column having the highest usage value, the port information identifying the port of the Ethernet bridge device from which the incoming address information is received.