METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MANAGING PACKET FLOWS FOR MULTIPLE NETWORK SERVICES

摘要

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates managing network data traffic for multiple network services. During operation, the system receives flow rules for network data traffic from multiple network services, wherein the flow rules can possibly conflict. Next, the system collapses the flow rules from the multiple network services into a consistent set of flow rules in a low-level form that can be efficiently applied to a packet flow. The system subsequently installs the consistent set of flow rules into a flow enforcement device, which applies the consistent set of flow rules to a packet flow received from a high-speed network connection. In this way, the flow rules from the multiple network services can be simultaneously applied to packet flow, instead of being applied separately by each network service.