A high performance router based on network processor and ternary-CAM

Network processors are designed to forward IP packets at wire-speed, with the advantage (over ASIC-based solutions) of being programmable. TCAM (ternary content-addressable memory) is a perfect hardware realization for fully parallel search. The ternary capability can be used to determine longest prefix matches. This paper addresses how to use IXP (Internet eXchange processor), a kind of network processor, and TCAM to design a high performance router. We also present a table management algorithm to decrease the incremental update time of TCAM and improve its utilization. Then we analyse the performance of our prototype and demonstrate that it can easily sustain wire-speed for eight 100Mbps and two 1000Mbps Ethernet ports.