LPR-Trie: A fast IPv6 routing lookup algorithm with virtual nodes

The number of IPv6 routes in todays backbone routers has grown rapidly, which has put tremendous pressure on route lookup and storage. Based on the analysis of IPv6 address prefix length and distribution characteristics, this paper proposes an IPv6 route lookup architecture called LPR-Trie. The core idea of the algorithm is to utilize more spaces and accelerate routing lookup. Moreover, we put forward the concept of virtual nodes, and leverage the link between virtual nodes and ordinary nodes to accelerate routing lookup. We provide the longest prefix routing entry (LPR) calculation algorithm to achieve the longest prefix match. The experimental results show that the virtual node mechanism increases the search speed up to 244%, and the virtual nodes have better stability by setting an appropriate keep-alive time according to the characteristics of actual traffic. This paper shows that our design improves the routing lookup speed and have better memory utilization.