Method And Apparatus For Optimizing Finite Automata Processing

A method, and corresponding apparatus and system are provided for optimizing matching at least one regular expression pattern in an input stream by walking at least one finite automaton in a speculative manner. The speculative manner may include iteratively walking at least two nodes of a given finite automaton, of the at least one finite automaton, in parallel, with a segment, at a current offset within a payload, of a packet in the input stream, based on positively matching the segment at a given node of the at least two nodes walked in parallel, the current offset being updated to a next offset per iteration.