Abstract: A method of maintaining multiple routing tables within a global table of a network router including the steps of providing the router with a route table generator to maintain the global table, and a forwarding engine to perform table lookups, the performing of table lookups in one of the multiple routing tables of the global table using a key, the key representing an index into the one of said multiple routing tables within said global table, the key created by combining a virtual private network identification (VPN ID) and an address prefix, and maintaining a plurality of table entries in the global table by using the key as a pointer to one of said table entries.