18.4.2 Looking up the routing table

The forwarding function searches the routing table for the entry that matches the destination address in the received IPv6 packet. The entry that matches contains the destination network address (that is, prefix). This entry is found when the Switch applies the prefix length (mask) in each entry in an AND operation with the destination address in the received IPv6 packet starting from the high-order bits. The following figure shows how a routing table is searched to determine the destination network address.

Figure 18-23: Retrieval of routing tables