PACKET FLOW BIFURCATION AND ANALYSIS

摘要

Methods and apparatus for optimum matching of a traffic profile with an individual traffic flow using flow bifurcation and analysis. Bifurcation and duplication of packets that make up a flow received at an ingress element are forwarded to each of egress traffic and computation processor resources, such that egress traffic operations and traffic analysis operations may be performed concurrently without introducing jitter or delay in either bifurcated processing path. The traffic analysis includes maintaining flow statistics, flow stateful information and classifying the flow as a particular application traffic type. The optimum traffic profile for this application traffic type is then selected and applied to the individual flow. The traffic analysis data is forwarded to ingress and egress processing elements in real time, and ingress and egress traffic processing operations are dynamically adjusted in view of the traffic analysis data.