Patent ID: 7843915

Claim:
A packet filtering method comprising: filtering packets received via a network interface card coupled to a host employing an instruction set of a pseudo-machine, the pseudo-machine being a generic state machine implementable in any of a plurality of locations, wherein the instruction set is generic, a set of instructions of the instruction set of the pseudo-machine being written as a discrete program which when executing performs the filtering to apply at least one filter rule, wherein the set of instructions is independent of the location in which the pseudo-machine is implemented, the filtering comprising: obtaining a packet of the received packets for filtering; processing bytes of the packet as a bytestream and executing the set of instructions to apply the at least one filter rule to the bytestream to filter the packet, wherein filtering the packet comprises one of accepting the packet, accepting the packet with modification, or discarding the packet, and wherein the executing is performed in any one of a plurality of locations without customization of the generic instruction set, and the pseudo-machine is implementable in any one of the plurality of locations without customization of the generic instruction set, the plurality of locations comprising the network interface card and the host, and the at least one filter rule is implemented the same across any of the plurality of locations; and wherein the processing and executing are performed in a first network interface card coupled to the host for packets received at the first network interface card, and wherein a second network interface card is also coupled to the host, the second network interface card lacking the pseudo-machine, and wherein the processing and executing are performed at the host for packets received at the second network interface card.