IP lookup in Cisco Routers

[2000chirag]

Hi, I was curious to know where the IP lookup takes place in a Cisco router, is it in the Operating System or is it the firmware, I am pretty confident it's in the Fimrware, but I would still like to clarify it. 

[Flavio Miranda]

Hi @2000chirag 

  Operating System and firm is the same thing the way I see it. Basically is the software that run inside the device.

 The software is loaded on the memory and run from there. The changes you make can be saved in a permanente memory call nvram.

 In my understanding all the commands we run in the memory where the IOS/firmware/operating system run.

[bigevilbeard]

The IP lookup takes place in the firmware of a Cisco router. The firmware is the software that is responsible for the basic functionality of the router, including IP routing. The firmware contains a routing table, which is a database of IP addresses and their corresponding routes. When a router receives a packet, it looks up the destination IP address in the routing table. If the destination IP address is found in the routing table, the router knows how to route the packet to its destination.

The operating system of a Cisco router is responsible for more advanced features, such as security, QoS, and VPNs. However, the IP lookup is performed by the firmware.

Hope this helps.