Patent ID: 8300525

Claim:
A device, comprising: a flow table to store, in a plurality of flow table records, statistics associated with a plurality of data flows; a flow type table to store, in a plurality of flow type table records, information that indicates whether to store statistics in the flow table for each of a plurality of types of data flows; logic to receive a data unit associated with a data flow; logic to determine a type of the data flow; logic to access the flow type table, based on the determined type of the data flow, to determine whether to store statistics associated with the data flow in the flow table; logic to store the statistics associated with the data flow in the flow table when the information in the flow type table indicates that statistics for the determined type of the data flow are to be stored in the flow table; and logic to process the data unit without storing the statistics associated with the data flow in the flow table when the information in the flow type table indicates that statistics for the determined type of the data flow are not to be stored in the flow table.