Patent ID: 7474661

Claim:
A router for interconnecting external devices coupled to said router, said router comprising: a switch fabric; and a plurality of routing nodes coupled to said switch fabric, wherein each of said plurality of routing nodes comprises packet processing circuitry capable of transmitting data packets to, and receiving data packets from, said external devices and further capable of transmitting data packets to, and receiving data packets from, other ones of said plurality of routing nodes via said switch fabric, wherein said packet processing circuitry comprises a first network processor comprising: N microengines capable of forwarding said data packets, each of said microengines capable of executing a plurality of threads that perform forwarding table lookup operations; and workload distribution circuitry capable of distributing data packets to said N microengines for forwarding; wherein said each microengine is capable of forwarding data packets of different traffic types; wherein said different traffic types comprise IPv4, IPv6 and MPLS.