Patent ID: 7747821

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a packet with a compression device; comparing data of the packet to data stored on a storage medium of the compression device to determine whether at least a portion of the data in the received packet matches data previously received by the compression device and stored on the storage medium; maintaining a cache within the compression device; accessing the cache to compare the portion of the data in the received packet with the data previously received by the compression device and stored on the storage medium; generating a cache miss when the data of the packet is not found within the cache; in response to a cache miss, sending a prefetch instruction from the compression device to a decompression device, wherein the prefetch instruction directs the decompression device to load data from a storage medium within the decompression device for use in decompressing subsequent packets received from the compression device; modifying the packet by inserting one or more pointers to storage locations of the storage medium upon detecting a match; and transmitting the modified packet to the decompression device.