Ternary CAM

kareem.afifi · ‎01-28-2010

Can someone point me to a good cisco document explaining the operation of this or maybe summarize how of the Ternary CAM works? I've been doing some searchs on the internet and more of the information i'm finding is making me more confused.

Thanks

Ganesh Hariharan · ‎01-28-2010

Can someone point me to a good cisco document explaining the operation of this or maybe summarize how of the Ternary CAM works? I've been doing some searchs on the internet and more of the information i'm finding is making me more confused.

Thanks

Hi,

In multilayer switches, all the processes that access control lists (ACLs) provide in traditional routing, such as matching, filtering, or control specific traffic, are implemented in hardware. TCAM allows a packet to be evaluated against an entire access list in a single table lookup.

TCAM are mainly used to process acl very fastly and effieciently in Multi layer switches.

Check out the belwo link as asked hope it will clear your query !!

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps708/products_tech_note09186a00807347ab.shtml

If helpful do rate the valueble post

Ganesh.H

Pavel Bykov · ‎01-28-2010

TCAM in this sense is a network search engine, that makes searches very efficient.

If you want to know the principle of how TCAM works, you can check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trie

Here is a datasheet of NSE, the similar type that Cisco uses:

http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/view/135414/CYPRESS/CYNSE70032-83BGC.html

But that datasheet is quite hardware-oriented, not function-oriented.

Jon Marshall · ‎01-28-2010

kareem.afifi wrote:

Can someone point me to a good cisco document explaining the operation of this or maybe summarize how of the Ternary CAM works? I've been doing some searchs on the internet and more of the information i'm finding is making me more confused.

Thanks

In case you haven't seen this attached is a link to a doc on 6500 ACL processing which goes into a fair bit of detail of how TCAM works -

6500 TCAM

Jon

kareem.afifi · ‎01-28-2010

Thanks everyone..i appreciate the help

Ganesh Hariharan · ‎01-28-2010

Thanks everyone..i appreciate the help

Kareem,

That great if the above responce's had helped,I would suggest if the above sugestion's are really valauble and helped you then rate those posts and mark the thread as resolved so that other would get beniffited.

Ganesh.H