Disclosed is an apparatus and method for storing and searching computer
node addresses in a computer network system. In one embodiment, the
apparatus comprises a frame forwarding device such as a switch. The
switch includes two MAC address tables including a primary MAC address
table and secondary MAC address table both for storing and searching MAC
addresses. The primary table stores records that contain compressed
values of MAC addresses. The records are contained in storage locations
that are referenced using the compressed value of the MAC address as a
search index. In order to account for searching collisions that may
result from different MAC addresses compressing to the same value, each
record in the primary address table is linked to a chain of records in
the secondary table. The records in the secondary table store the full
value of the MAC address. Each chain of records in the secondary address
table contains MAC addresses the present invention.