PROCESSING NETWORK TRAFFIC

摘要

A system adapted to process network traffic includes at least one processing engine configured to receive network data being transferred over a network and generate metadata relating to the data. The system includes at least one rule engine configured to receive and process the metadata to generate an output, and at least one selection engine configured to receive and process the rule engine output to determine whether the network data is to be processed by a further component and/or whether the network data is to continue to be transferred over the network. The processing engine, rule engine and selection engine can be implemented in system hardware or firmware, and the further component can be software for execution on another processor.