Patent ID: 7688823

Claim:
A method of wire-tapping traffic flows received by a network node, the method comprising: receiving a packet; wire-tapping the received packet by: parsing header information of the packet by obtaining relevant primary header information and relevant secondary header information; performing in parallel a primary forwarding lookup process using the relevant primary header information and a secondary forwarding lookup process using the relevant secondary header information, wherein the primary and secondary lookup processes are performed independently of each other and wherein the secondary forwarding lookup process comprises: obtaining a profile information of the packet; and searching a secondary forwarding information table for second forwarding information that is associated with the profile information; independently of the secondary forwarding lookup process, forwarding the packet to a first exit port of the network node specified by at least in part a result of the primary forwarding lookup process; and independently of the primary forwarding lookup process, forwarding a copy of the packet to a second exit port of the network node specified by at least in part a result of the secondary forwarding lookup process.