US Patent 7860028 Flexible ethernet bridge

Flooding in an Ethernet bridge can be minimized by employing various techniques. In one embodiment using an address table containing a plurality of entries, each of said plurality of entries specifying one of said plurality of ports on which packets containing a corresponding destination address are to be forwarded. A priority field associated with a high priority first entry is maintained. A new entry creation situation is determined and a replacement approach which is less likely to replace said first entry than another entry which does not have associated high priority field is utilized.