I'll bite: tries were (and are still?) used for longest prefix match lookups on IP addresses in forwarding plane software and hardware. I've actually seen and

I'll bite: tries were (and are still?) used for longest prefix match lookups on IP addresses in forwarding plane software and hardware. I've actually seen and worked with tries in real, shipping, working hardware/software. e.g. see https://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2017-ipv4-route-lookup-linux https://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2017-ipv4-route-lookup-lin... Later TCAMs came along for hardware lookups.