Figure 15: Control Packet Handling For Routing And Forwarding Table Updates - Juniper M10 Hardware Manual

The Routing Engine constructs and maintains one or more routing tables. From the routing
tables, the Routing Engine derives a table of active routes, called the forwarding table,
which is then copied into the Packet Forwarding Engine. The design of the ASICs allow
the forwarding table in the Packet Forwarding Engine to be updated without interrupting
forwarding performance. See Figure 15.

Figure 15: Control Packet Handling for Routing and Forwarding Table Updates

•
Monitoring efficiency and flexibility—The router supports functions such as alarm
handling and packet counting on every port, without degrading packet-forwarding
performance.
Forwarding table
updates
Packets
in
Routing Engine Architecture
Routing protocol
process
Routing Engine
Forwarding table
Packet Forwarding
Engines
System Architecture Overview
Routing protocol
packets from network
Packets
out
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