A METHOD AND A SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING INFORMATION RELATING TO A DATA PACKET OR FRAME

摘要

A pipelined packet processor comprises an initialising unit (14), an OSI Layer 2 processing unit (16), an OSI Layer 3 processing unit (18), an OSI Layer 4 processing unit (20), and a director unit (22). It is advantageous to perform lower layer analysis before higher layer analysis. In this situation, a piece of information proposed by both a lower layer analysis and a higher layer analysis may be finally selected as the higher layer analysis result as the higher layer analysis would normally provide the best proposal for the information. Also, lower level analysis may determine whether and which higher analysis should be performed.