Implementation of Network Application Layer Parser for Multiple TCP/IP Flows in Reconfigurable Devices

This paper presents an implementation of a high-performance network application layer parser in FPGAs. At the core of the architecture resides a pattern matcher and a parser. The pattern matcher scans for patterns in high-speed streaming TCP data streams. The parser core augments each pattern found with semantic information determined from the patterns location within the data stream. The packet payload parser can provide a higher level of understanding of a data stream for many network applications. Such applications include high performance XML parsers, content-based/aware routers, and others. Additionally, a TCP processor allows stateful packet payload parsing of up to 8 million simultaneous TCP flows.