Patent ID: 7623520

Claim:
A method for routing a packet in a routing device having a routing rule of a specific destination IP allowing a multi-nexthop setting, the method comprising: providing a first table in the routing device for recording a plurality of unrepeated destination IP addresses reachable from the routing device, the unrepeated destination IP addresses including the specific destination IP allowing the multi-nexthop setting; providing a second table in the routing device for recording a plurality of MAC addresses, the second table including at least one possible MAC address corresponding to each destination IP address in the first table, and a plurality of possible MAC addresses corresponding to the specific destination IP allowing the multi-nexthop setting; looking up, in the first table, a destination IP address read from the packet to thereby obtain an indication value corresponding to a range of all the possible MAC addresses in the second table for the destination IP address read from the packet; selecting one of the possible MAC addresses in the range from the second table as a nexthop; and transmitting the packet to the nexthop.