What is the central processing component of the forwarding plane?
What is the central processing component of the forwarding plane?
The central processing component of the forwarding plane is the Packet Forwarding Engine (PFE). The PFE is responsible for the actual forwarding of packets through the network, performing tasks such as packet lookup, filtering, and switching based on the information in the forwarding table. It operates independently of the Routing Engine (RE), which handles control plane tasks like running routing protocols and maintaining the routing table. Therefore, the PFE is the central processing component within the forwarding plane.
The one making the forwarding table is RE, the one using it is PFE