Configuration and retrieval method and system for flow forwarding table

The invention discloses a configuration and retrieval method and system for a flow forwarding table, and the method comprises the following steps: 1, dividing all items of the flow forwarding table according to a spatial clustering rule, and forming a plurality of sub-tables; 2, respectively performing five times of division on the sub-tables formed in the step 1 by utilizing a source IP address and a destination IP address to obtain a quadtree; 3, combining quad trees formed by the sub-tables to form a quad forest, and generating configuration information of the quad forest; and 4, retrieving the quad-forest according to the destination IP address and the source IP address of the input packet to obtain a final forwarding result. According to the characteristics of the forwarding table entries, the linear flow forwarding table entries are converted into a quadtree forest formed by a plurality of quadtrees from the perspective of subspace division, the table look-up time complexity is reduced from O (n) to O (