POPE and PaNeL : Fast lookup in routing tables

Resolution - deciding on the appropriate action for a packet, based on a provided table of rules - is an extremely important problem in computer networks. Both routing and filtering require fast resolution. In this paper, we explore the possibility of using XMT, a recently-implemented FPGA-based general parallel machine, to perform resolution. While XMT is still not mature, our early results show that our systems, POPE and PaNeL, outperform the state-of-the-art serial solution by one to two orders of magnitude. Thus, we suggest that XMT may become a viable solution for fast packet processing in the future.