Patent ID: 7349981

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving an identified address to match to a destination address; dividing the identified address into first and second parts; masking a portion of the first part with wildcards, wherein the masked portion is not required to be matched; if the unmasked portion of the first part does not match one or more addresses in a router table then: identifying a router table address having a longest prefix match to the unmasked portion of the first part of the identified address; and if an unmasked portion of the first part of the address exactly matches one or more addresses in a router table, then: matching the masked first portion to the one or more addresses in the router table; and if the masked first portion matches the one or more addresses in the router table then: masking a portion of the second part with wildcards, wherein the masked portion is not required to be matched; and matching the unmasked portion of the second part of the indentified address to determine a longest prefix match to the unmasked portion of the second part.