Patent ID: 7769873

Claim:
A method comprising: executing a routing protocol process on a processor of a first network router; receiving, with the routing protocol process, routing communications from a second router in accordance with a routing protocol, wherein the routing communications from the second router specify routing information that informs the first network router of routes to a plurality of network destinations within a network, and wherein at least one of the routing communications further specifies a hardware-independent filter description, the filter description including: (1) at least one filtering rule specifying filtering criteria for identifying packets, and (2) an action to be applied to packets matching the filtering criteria; processing the routing information with the routing protocol process to generate forwarding information for forwarding hardware of the first network router, wherein the routing protocol process analyzes the routes received by the routing protocol and generates the forwarding information to associate each of the network destinations with specific next hops; dynamically inserting a filter within a packet forwarding path of the forwarding hardware of the first network router in accordance with the received filter description, wherein the forwarding hardware is communicatively coupled to the processor of the first network router; applying the action included in the filter description to packets matching the filtering criteria to filter packets in the forwarding hardware in accordance with the filter; and forwarding packets in accordance with forwarding information that is generated from the routing information.