Patent ID: 8005989

Claim:
A method for managing traffic in a communications network, the method comprising: examining an Internet Protocol (IP) header and a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) header of a received packet to determine whether the received packet is a TCP/IP packet; determining whether the received packet is a data packet if determined that the received packet is a TCP/IP packet by examining control bits in the TCP header; examining a length field in the IP header to determine its value if selected ones of said examined control bits are set to a logical “0”; multiplying a value in a data offset field in the TCP header by four; subtracting a result of the multiplication from the determined length field value; and determining that the received packet is a data packet if a result of the subtraction of the result of the multiplication is greater than zero; performing a lookup in a cache using a four-tuple of the received packet if determined that the received packet is a data packet, the received packet four-tuple comprising an IP Source Address (SA) from the IP header, an IP Destination Address (DA) from the IP header, a TCP Source Port (SP) from the TCP header and a TCP Destination Port (DP) from the TCP header; forwarding the received packet via a processor by enforcing actions stored in the cache if a match to the four-tuple is found in the cache by the lookup; forwarding the received packet via a processor full packet search path if determined that the received packet is not a TCP/IP packet, if determined that the received packet is not a data packet or if a match is not found in the cache by the lookup; adding an action performed on the received packet via the processor full packet search path to the cache using the four-tuple of the received packet if determined that the received packet is a TCP/IP packet and is a data packet and if a match is not found in the cache by the lookup; and updating contents of the cache at times that correspond to an expected burst interval of a bundling of data packets.