TCAM-based forwarding engines
Overview Ternary Content Addressable Memory, or TCAM, is a critical component of a modern router. It is a powerful and fast hardware lookup engine for IP Prefixes. It is also complex, expensive and power hungry. Not surprisingly, there never seems to be never enough on whatever system you use. TCAM has historically been used to perform hardware-table lookups of Access-list, Netflow or QoS tables in routers and switches. Most of these implementations from your favorite brand-name vendors use one…