Patent ID: 9729680
Date: 2017-08-08
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method to process a network frame, comprising: receiving network packets for network communications through a network interface; parsing packet frames for the network packets to obtain frame data including packet fields associated with the network packets; identifying fields for classification key generation that exist within the frame data and that do not exist within the frame data; extracting data from each identified field that exists within frame data for each packet frame; obtaining default data for each identified field that does not exist within the frame data for each packet frame; generating a frame classification key based upon the extracted data and the default data for each packet frame; embedding valid-field (VF) bits within the frame classification key for each packet frame to distinguish the extracted data from the default data; classifying the packet frames with classifications based upon the frame classification keys and the VF bits embedded within the frame classification keys, the VF bits identifying default data to ignore for the classifications; and processing the frame data for the packet frames based upon the classifications.