In this paper, a new data structure, called the classified multisuffix trie (CMST), is proposed for designing dynamic router-tables. CMST achieves a better performance than existing data structures because each node can store more than one prefix and the longest matching prefix may be found in an internal node rather than on a leaf. Furthermore, with the classification in each node, the dynamic router-table operations can be performed efficiently. To reduce the memory requirement, we store each prefix's corresponding suffix in a CMST node, instead of storing a full binary string. Based on the CMST, we also propose another data structure, called the Partitioning Classified Multisuffix Trie (PCMST) to reduce the height of the trie and expedite router-table operations. Experiments using real IPv4 routing databases demonstrate that the proposed data structures are efficient in terms of memory usage and it performs well in terms of the average times of the lookup, insert, and delete operations. We report the results of experiments conducted to compare the performance of the proposed data structure with that of other structures using the benchmark IPv4 prefix databases AS4637, AS6447, and AS65000 with 219,581, 296,552, and 226,847 prefixes, respectively.

IP lookup affects the speed of an incoming packet and the time required to determine which output port the packet should be sent to; hence, it plays an important role in the design of router-tables. In this paper, we propose a new data structure, called a multiprefix trie, for use in designing dynamic router-tables. One key feature of our data structure is that each node can store more than one prefix, which reduces the number of memory accesses. When performing lookup, the structure can search more prefixes in one node and may find the longest matching prefix in an internal node rather than on a leaf. Moreover, when updating the router-table, it does not need to reconstruct the table. As a by-product, the proposed data structure minimizes the time required for dynamic router-table operations, including lookup, insertion, and deletion, and also reduces the number of memory accesses. We report the results of experiments conducted to compare the proposed data structure with other structures using the benchmark IPv4 prefix database AS4637 with 219,581 prefixes.