A SYSTEM DIRECTING FLOW OF PACKETS BY-PASSING POLICY-BASED APPLICATION FOR PROCESSING BY POLICY ENGINE ACCORDING TO ACTION SPECIFICATION IN POLICY CACHE

A hardware-based policy engine that employs a policy cache to process packets of network traffic. The policy engine includes a stream classifier that associates each packet with at least one action processor based on data in the packet, and the action processor further acts on the packets based on the association determined by the stream classifier.