A Survey of Hash Tables with Summaries for IP Lookup Applications

Efficient IPv6 packet forwarding is still a major bottleneck in todays networks. Especially in the internet core we are faced with very large routing tables and a high number of high-speed links. In addition economical restrains exist in terms of manufacturing and operation costs. So demand is high for efficient IPv6 packet forwarding mechanisms. In the last few years a lot of work has been done on hash tables and summaries that allow compact representations and constant lookup time. The features sound attractive for IPv6 routing, thus a survey and evaluation of these data structures seems appropriate.