Message forwarding device, network equipment and method

Abstract

The invention discloses a message forwarding device, network equipment and a method. The device comprises a switching chip and a network processor, wherein the switching chip is used for sending information comprising a source address and a destination address of message and a port of the switching chip for receiving the message to the network processor when address learning is not performed on the message received by the equipment from a set VLAN and the port corresponding to the message destination address is not searched in a first medium access control address table, and forwarding the message according to the returned search result; and the network processor is used for searching the port corresponding to the destination address of the message in a second medium access control address table according to the information received from the switching chip, returning the research result to the switching chip, and performing address learning when the source address of the message is not in the second medium access control address table. By adopting the network processor to assist the switching chip to perform the address learning and table search processing for partial message, the capacity of the MAC address table is expanded, and meanwhile the forwarding performance and function of the message forwarding device are not affected.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the technical field of network communication, in particular to a message forwarding device, network equipment and method capable of expanding the capacity of a medium access control address table. Background technique [0002] The packets transmitted in the Ethernet are all transmitted in accordance with the Ethernet frame format, and the packets in the Ethernet frame format include a source Media Access Control MAC (MediaAccess Control) address and a destination MAC address. The switch itself stores a MAC address table, also known as an address forwarding table. The switch uses the following method to establish a MAC address table: When the switch receives a message from a certain port, it reads the source MAC address in the message to obtain the source MAC address. Which port the corresponding device is connected to, when the source MAC address in the message is not in the MAC address table, add the entry including the source...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, this solution brings a problem: the VLANs managed by each switching chip cannot overlap, that is, the member ports of a VLAN can only be the ports connected to the same switching chip, and the VLAN member ports cannot come from two switching chips, which greatly limits the product application

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