METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR PACKET CLASSIFICATION WITH MULTI-LEVEL DATA STRUCTURE

Providing different levels of quality of service for different data flows being transported over a data link requires a very fast way to classify individual packets. Providing meaningful classification generally requires classifying data packets in several dimensions. A classification method represents a rule base as a hierarchy of linked tables and sequentially matches each parameter value in a packet signature against tables in the hierarchy. The method supports longest prefix matching and avoids time consuming backtracking by adding rules to the rule base.