US 7,599,364 B2 · Configurable network connection address forming hardware

Abstract

An apparatus and method are provided for extracting connection information from a traffic header in a communications network. The apparatus includes a first storage element containing a first look-up table for determining a first data packet header offset and data size for extracting a communications protocol type from the header and a second storage element containing a second look-up table for determining from the communications protocol type a second data packet header offset and second data size for extracting a connection address from the header. The storage elements may be in the form of content-addressable memories. Exception handling and hardware initialization can be controlled by a system processor.

Claims11

Dependent claims

A method for processing a header of a data packet comprising:

generating, with a first look-up table, a first data packet header offset and a first data size corresponding to a communications protocol type;
extracting said communications protocol type of said header;
generating, with a second look-up table, a second data packet header offset and a second data size corresponding to a first partial connection address offset based on said communications protocol type;
extracting said first partial connection address from said header based on said first partial connection address offset and said second data size information;
extracting a protocol header length field from said header of the data packet;
and
loading said second look-tip table with header offset and data size information based at least in part on the value of said protocol header length field.

4 more elements

A computer readable storage medium encoded with computer program code, wherein, when the computer program code is executed by a processor, the processor performs a method for reading packet header data comprising the steps of:

generating, with a first look-up table, a first data packet header offset and a first data size corresponding to a communications protocol type;
extracting said communications protocol type of said header;
generating, with a second look-up table, a second data packet header offset and a second data size corresponding to a partial connection address offset based on said communications protocol type;
extracting said partial connection address from said header based on said partial connection address offset and said second data size information;
extracting a protocol header length field from said header of a data packet;
loading said second look-tip table with header offset and data size information based at least in part on the value of said protocol header length field;
and
storing a queue identification number based in part on the partial connection address in a queuing unit.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Configurable network connection address forming hardware

Life of this patent

Configurable network connection address forming hardware

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims11