A key feature of the VIP2 is its ability to receive route information from the master Route Switch Processor (RSP) – the systems central processing engine – or RSP7000. Based on this route data a VIP2 can make its own Layer 3 switching decisions providing a scaleable distributed switching architecture called Distributed Switching and its scales packet processing throughput of a VIP2-equipped router. In addition resources for route policy and administration are increased by off-loading the central processor of packet handling tasks.