The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 14, 2006
Filed:
Dec. 31, 1998
Raghunath Iyer, Los Altos, CA (US);
Sundar Iyer, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Moti Jiandani, Fremont, CA (US);
Ramana Rao, Hyderabad, IN;
Raghunath Iyer, Los Altos, CA (US);
Sundar Iyer, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Moti Jiandani, Fremont, CA (US);
Ramana Rao, Hyderabad, IN;
PMC-Sierrra US, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
As Internet packet flow increases, the demand for high speed packet filtering has grown. The present invention introduces a high-speed rule processing method that may be used for packet filtering. The method pre-processes a set of packet filtering rules such that the rules may be searched in parallel by a set of independent search units. Specifically, the rules are divided into N orthogonal dimensions that comprise aspects of each packet that may be examined and tested. Each of the N dimensions are then divided into a set of dimension rule ranges. Each rule range is assigned a value that specifies the rules that may apply in that range. The rule preprocessing is completed by creating a search structure to be used for classifying a packet into one of the rule ranges in each of the N dimensions. Each search structure may be used by an independent search unit such that all N dimensions may be searched concurrently. The packet processing method of the present invention activates the N independent search units to search the N pre-processor created search structures. The output of each of the N search structures is then logically combined to select a rule to be applied.