A Comparison of Hashing Schemes for Address Lookup in Computer Networks.pdf

A Comparison of Hashi ng Schemes f or Address Lookup i n Computer Networks Raj Jain, Seni or Member Abstract { Using a trace of addres s ref erences , we com- pared the eci ency of several di erent hashi ng f unc- t i ons , such as cycl i c redundancy checki ng (CRC) pol y- nomi al s , Fl etcher checksum, f ol di ng of addres s octet s us i ng the excl us i ve- or operat i on, and bi t extract i on f rom the addres s . Gui del i nes are provi ded f or determi ni ng the s i ze of hash mask requi red to achi eve a speci ed l evel of per f ormance. 1 INTRODUCTI ON The trend toward networks becomi ng l arger and f aster , addres ses becomi ng l arger , has i mpel l ed a need to ex- pl ore al ternat i ves f or f as t addres s recogni t i on. Thi s probl emi s actual l y a speci al case of the general probl em of searchi ng through a l arge data base and ndi ng the i nf ormat i on associ ated wi th a gi ven key. For exampl e, Datal i nk adapter s on l ocal area networks (LAN) need to recogni ze the mul t i cas t dest i nat i on addres ses of f rames on the LAN. Br i dges , used to i nterconnect two or more LANs, have to recogni ze the dest i nat i on addres ses of every f rame and deci de qui ckl y whether to recei ve the f rame f or f orwardi ng. Router s i n wi de area networks have to l ook through a l arge f orwardi ng database to deci de the output l i nk f or a gi ven dest i nat i on addres s . Name servers have the ul t i mate respons i bi l i ty f or asso- ci at i ng names to character i s t i cs . In these appl i cat i ons , a hashi ng al gor i thmcan be used to search through a very l arge i nf ormat i on base i n constant t i me. We al so i n- ves t i gated cachi ng as a poss i bl e sol ut i on but f ound that cachi ng coul d be harmf ul i n some cases i n the sense that the per f ormance woul d be better wi thout cachi ng [4]. To compare var i ous hashi ng st rategi es , we used a trace of dest i nat i on addres ses observed on an Ethernet LAN i n use. The