Patent ID: 11876696
Assignee: PENSANDO SYSTEMS INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 13:
14. A network appliance comprising:
a memory that is configured to store a plurality of network rules for processing a plurality of network flows; and
a packet processing pipeline circuit that includes a plurality of processing stages,
wherein the packet processing pipeline circuit and the memory are configured to implement network flow tracing, wherein the network flow tracing includes:
using the plurality of network rules and a trace directive to produce a configuration data that includes a plurality of policies;
using the configuration data to configure the packet processing pipeline circuit to implement the plurality of policies, the plurality of policies configuring the packet processing pipeline circuit to process the network flows and to produce a metadata for a network packet that is in one of the plurality of network flows;
the metadata including a hardware identifier that indicates one of the plurality of processing stages;
the metadata including a policy identifier that indicates one of the plurality of policies applied by the one of the plurality of processing stages to the network packet;
configuring the network appliance to use the policy identifier and the hardware identifier to identify one of the plurality of network rules; and
configuring the network appliance to produce a trace report that indicates the one of the plurality of network rules in association with the one of the plurality of processing stages and the one of the plurality of network flows.