TCAM-based distributed parallel packet classification algorithm with range-matching solution

Packet classification (PC) has been a critical data path function for many emerging networking applications. An interesting approach is the use of TCAM to achieve deterministic, high speed PC However, apart from high cost and power consumption, due to slow growing clock rate for memory technology in general, PC based on the traditional single TCAM solution has difficulty to keep up with fast growing line rates. Moreover, the TCAM storage efficiency is largely affected by the need to support rules with ranges, or range matching. In this paper, a distributed TCAM scheme that exploits chip-level-parallelism is proposed to greatly improve the PC throughput. This scheme seamlessly integrates with a range encoding scheme, which not only solves the range matching problem but also ensures a balanced high throughput performance. Using commercially available TCAM chips, the proposed scheme achieves PC performance of more than 100 million packets per second (Mpps), matching OC768 (40 Gbps) line rate.