METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR FAST BINARY NETWORK ADDRESS LOOKUPS USING PARENT NODE INFORMATION STORED IN ROUTING TABLES ENTRIES
Methods and systems for using binary searches for variable length network address prefix lookups are disclosed. Variable length prefixes are stored in a network address forwarding table. Each prefix corresponds to an entry in the forwarding table. The entries correspond to nodes in a binary tree. Each entry in the forwarding table includes path information regarding parent nodes of each entry in the binary tree. When a lookup is performed in the routing table, bits in the path information are used to determine the longest parent node prefix that matches the address being searched. The longest parent node prefix corresponds to the longest matching prefix.