Switching TCP/IP packets at high speed. Ipsilon's IP Switch started the trend and various vendors followed suit with different approaches, including Cisco's tag switching and 3Com's Fast IP. The goal was to switch IP packets faster than traditional router-based layer 3 forwarding. Subsequent routers have improved immensely and can forward packets at even faster speeds while inspecting each and every packet. See layer 3 switch, IP Switch and tag switching.