Increased Layer 3 forwarding capabilities for MPCs and Multiservices DPCs through FIB localization

Forwarding information base (FIB) localization characterizes the Packet Forwarding Engines in a router into two types: FIB-Remote and FIB-Local. FIB-Local Packet Forwarding Engines install all of the routes from the default route tables into Packet Forwarding Engine forwarding hardware. FIB-Remote Packet Forwarding Engines create a default (0.0) route that references a next hop or a unilist of next hops to indicate the FIB-Local that can perform full IP table looks-ups for received packets. FIB-Remote Packet Forwarding Engines forward received packets to the set of FIB-Local Packet Forwarding Engines. The capacity of MPCs is much higher than that of Multiservices DPCs, so an MPC is designated as the local Packet Forwarding Engine, and a Multiservices DPC is designated as the remote Packet Forwarding Engine. The remote Packet Forwarding Engine forwards all network-bound traffic to the local Packet Forwarding Engine. If multiple MPCs are designated as local Packet Forwarding Engines, then the Multiservices DPC load balances the traffic using the unilist of next hops as the default route.