Rule caching for packet classification support

The growth of the Internet and requirements for enhanced flexibility and versatility have resulted in packet classification becoming an essential part of network systems such as routers and firewalls. Classification of packets into flows based on multiple header fields is a complex problem. Several algorithms have been proposed to achieve wire speed classification performance. However, an ever widening gap between wire speed and memory access speed continues to motivate the quest for techniques to enhance classification performance. In this paper, we propose a caching technique to improve search performance of any classification algorithm using characteristics inherent to Internet traffic.