A novel cache architecture to support layer-four packet classification at memory access speeds

Existing and emerging layer-4 switching technologies require packet classification to be performed on more than one header field, known as layer-4 lookup. Currently, the fastest general layer-8 lookup scheme delivers a throughput of 1 million lookups per second (MLPS), far off from 25/75 MLPS needed to support 50/150 Gbps layer-4 router. We propose the use of route caching to speed up layer-4 lookup, and design and implement a cache architecture for this purpose. We investigated the locality behavior of the Interent traffic (at layer-4) and propose a near-LRU algorithm that can best harness this behavior. In implementation, to best approximate fully-associative near-LRU using relatively inexpensive set-associative hardware, we invented a dynamic set-associative scheme that exploits the nice properties of N-universal hash functions. The cache architecture achieves a high and stable hit ratio above 90 percent and a fast throughput up to 75 MLPS at a reasonable cost