Patent attributes
A method for increasing resolution of virtual router assignment in a computer network. An incoming packet may be parsed to obtain its source and destination IP addresses. With the obtained IP addresses, and in some cases other information about the packet, a classification engine may perform a multi-field classification in a memory such as a TCAM (Ternary Content-Addressable Memory). The classification result may point to an action entry in an action table in a memory, e.g., an SRAM (Static random access memory). The action entry may indicate policy-based setting of the virtual router, and the VRF-ID. A virtual router is then assigned according to the VRF-ID. A group based classification in layer 3 of the present invention may avoid using a table to define segregation policies between hosts pair by pair.
