Patent ID: 8213428

Claim:
A method for determining a control block index for a data cell received by a network processor coupled to an ATM network comprising: receiving a data cell at a port of the network processor, the data cell having a virtual path identifier and a virtual channel identifier, wherein the network processor includes a microprocessor and on-chip hardware, both on a same chip, and wherein the on-chip hardware includes a logic circuit and on-chip memory; determining, by the network processor, a port number for the port; employing, by the network processor, bits of at least one of the virtual path identifier, the virtual channel identifier and the port number to create a first address; employing, by the network processor, the first address to access the on-chip memory and to obtain a first entry from the on-chip memory, the first entry including a data structure, the data structure including a plurality of fields including: a field representative of a first base memory address; a field representative of a number of bits of the port number to use in the control block index; a field representative of a number of bits of the virtual path identifier to use in the control block index; and a field representative of a number of bits of the virtual channel identifier to use in the control block index; and employing the first base memory address and the number of bits of the port number, virtual path identifier- and virtual channel identifier specified by the first entry to create the control block index for the data cell.