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

Claim 0:
1. A network appliance comprising:
a packet processing pipeline circuit that includes a plurality of processing stages; and
a memory configured to store a plurality of network rules for processing a plurality of network flows,
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 plurality of network rules to produce a configuration map;
using the configuration data to configure the plurality of processing stages of the packet processing pipeline circuit to implement the plurality of policies to process the plurality of network flows;
producing, by the packet processing pipeline circuit, a metadata while processing a network packet of one of the plurality of network flows, the metadata including a hardware identifier and a policy identifier;
using the hardware identifier, the policy identifier, and the configuration map to identify one of the plurality of network rules; and
producing, by the network appliance, a trace report that indicates the one of the plurality of network rules in association with a one of the plurality of processing stages and the one of the plurality of network flows.