Routing Engine and Packet Forwarding Engine

A Services Router has two primary software processing components:

Routing Engine—Creates and maintains the routing tables that determine how packets are routed through the network.
Packet Forwarding Engine—Processes packets; applies filters, routing policies, and other features; and forwards packets to the next hop along the route to their final destination.

For information about Routing Engine hardware, see J2300 Routing Engine or J4300 and J6300 Routing Engine.