Abstract: A switching device for forwarding network traffic to a desired destination on a network, such as a telephone or computer network. The switching device includes multiple ports and uses a lookup table containing lookup keys to determine which port to forward network traffic over. The lookup table includes disparate forwarding databases that contain database entries in different formats. For example, one forwarding databases may relate to MAC addresses, while another database relates to IP addresses. The disparate databases are maintained in a single lookup table and a binary search engine searches the table without regard to the database format. Like-kind database entries are grouped within the lookup table and the lookup table is maintained in sorted order by prepending format identification bits to the lookup keys. Memory availability for the disparate databases can be dynamically changed allowing customization for a particular user application.