Hierarchical binary search tree for packet classification

In order to provide value-added services such as policy-based routing and the quality of services in next generation network, the Internet routers need to classify packets into flows for different treatments. Since packet classification should be performed in wire-speed for every packet incoming in several hundred gigabits per second, it becomes a major challenge in the Internet routers. In this letter, we propose a new packet classification scheme based on hierarchical binary search tree. The proposed scheme hierarchically connects binary search trees without empty internal nodes, and hence the proposed architecture significantly improves the search performance as well as greatly reduces the memory requirement compared with trie-based schemes.