Importance

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Abstract

A method and apparatus for efficiently switching cells through a switch fabric are provided. According to one aspect of the present invention, logic for forwarding and filtering multicast data is distributed among various layers of a network device, such as a switch, router, bridge, or the like. Data is received at a first port of an input/output (I/O) card. A multicast group identifier corresponding to the data is determined. The data and the multicast group identifier are then transferred to a switching card which indexes into a first set of correlation data with the multicast group identifier to identify a set of egress forwarding paths that lead to I/O cards having members of the multicast group. The switching card forwards the data to the I/O cards via the set of egress forwarding paths identified. For their part, the I/O cards identify a set of ports associated with the multicast group by indexing into a second set of correlation data and forwarding the data to each of the ports identified. According to another aspect of the present invention, a network device comprises a backplane, multiple I/O cards, and a switch core. Correlation data, e.g., in the form of tables indexed by multicast group identifiers, is distributed between the I/O cards and the switch core. The I/O cards each include multiple ports, a first set of correlation data, and a forwarding and filtering mechanism. The first set of correlation data maps multicast group identifiers to ports that are members of the corresponding multicast groups. The forwarding and filtering mechanism is configured to forward multicast data based upon the first set of correlation data. The switch core includes a second set of correlation data and a forwarding and filtering mechanism. The switch core's forwarding and filtering mechanism is configured to forward multicast data to member I/O cards based upon the second set of correlation data which maps multicast group identifiers to I/O cards that include member ports.

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First Claim