Aggressive research on gigabit-per-second networks has led to dramatic
improvements in network transmission speeds. One result of these impr
ovements has been to put pressure on router technology to keep pace. T
his paper describes a router, nearly completed, which is more than fas
t enough to keep up with the latest transmission technologies. The rou
ter has a backplane speed of 50 Gb/s and can forward tens of millions
of packets per second.