SYSTEM AND PROCESS FOR APPLICATION-LEVEL FLOW CONNECTION OF DATA PROCESSING NETWORKS

摘要

A network switch using information from OSI model Layers (2) and above can identify a particular sequence of network messages that occur as a result of a requested process, the sequence called a flow. The switch establishes a virtual connection at Layers (4) and above to route a data packet according to the particular flow to which the data packet belongs. The switch performs application-level flow switching using the information in the higher network layers and can differentiate between flows that result from web browsing and flows that result from a file transfer or database query, even though both may use the same layer (3) protocol.