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System and method for flow table management

  • US 8,767,551 B2
  • Filed: 01/25/2012
  • Issued: 07/01/2014
  • Est. Priority Date: 01/27/2011
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method, comprising:

  • in a system that processes communication packets, maintaining a list of active packet flows and respective actions that are specified for application to the packet flows, and a set of packet processing rules and a list of packet flows;

    based on the rules, defining respective actions for application to the packet flows;

    accepting a change in the packet processing rules;

    classifying an input packet into a packet flow from the list;

    verifying that a respective action applicable to the packet flow matches the packet processing rules only upon arrival of a first packet belonging to the packet flow following the change in the packet processing rules;

    applying the verified action to the input packet;

    classifying the input packets into the packet flows based on the processing rules, and applying to each input packet a respective action in accordance with the list;

    defining different respective time-out periods for different ones of the packet flows on the list; and

    upon detecting that no packet belonging to a given packet flow was accepted within a respective time-out period of the given packet flow, deleting the given packet flow from the list of the active flows.

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