Software Pipelining for Packet Filters

Packet filters play an essential role in traffic management and security management on the Internet. In order to create software-based packet filters that are fast enough to work even under a DOS attack, it is vital to effectively combine both the higher-level optimization related to algorithmic structure and the lower-level optimization related to acceleration techniques in compiler study. In the present paper, the authors focus on the lower-level (machine code) optimization using software-pipelining, and report experimental results that indicate the potential of the approach for accelerating packet filter performance.