Cisco Express Forwarding
Cisco Express Forwarding (CEF) is an advanced layer 3 switching technology used mainly in large core networks or the Internet to enhance the overall network performance. Although CEF is a proprietary protocol of Cisco, other vendors of multilayer switches or high-capacity routers offer a similar functionality where layer-3 switching or routing is done in hardware (in an ASIC) instead of by software and the (central) CPU. == Function == CEF is mainly used to increase packet switching speed by reducing the overhead and delays introduced by other routing techniques.