Distributed packet flow inspection and processing

摘要

Distribution of network processing load among a set of packet processing devices is improved by employing means for eliminating, controlling, or otherwise affecting redundant packet processing operations. In one embodiment, at least two packet processing devices are present, both capable of processing data packets flowing therethrough, such as, inspecting, detecting, and filtering data packets pursuant to one or more filters from a filter set. Redundancy is controlled by providing or enabling either or both of the packet processing devices with capability for detecting during its said inspection of said data packets that, for example, one or more filters had been previously executed on said data packets by the other packet processing device, and then not executing the previously-executed filters on said data packets.

主权项

1. A network comprising:
a first packet processing device to apply a first filtering operation on a data packet; and a second packet processing device to
receive the data packet from the first packet processing device,determine filtering operations previously performed on the data packet,identify the first filtering operation as a filtering operation previously performed on the data packet,based on the identification of the first filtering operation, apply a second filtering operation, different from the first filtering operation, on the data packet, andadd a tag to the data packet to indicate the second filtering operation applied on the data packet.