1. An apparatus for processing a packet, the apparatus comprising: an input interface circuitry for receiving the packet; a context indicator generator, coupled to the input interface circuitry, for generating a context vector based on a characteristic of the input interface circuitry and a first subset of the packet; a lookup word field generator coupled to the input interface circuitry for generating one or more lookup word vectors based on a second subset of the packet; and an associative memory, coupled to the context indicator generator and the lookup word field generator, for performing a lookup operation based on a lookup word, the lookup word including said one or more lookup word vectors and the context vector.