Patent ID: 8611350

Claim:
An apparatus for layer-2 to layer-7 search engine for high-speed network application, comprising: a media access controller (MAC) connecting a computer network and receiving a plurality of data packets; a packet parser electrically coupled to the media access controller to parse the data packets; a plurality of protocol search engines electrically coupled to the packet parser and searching a plurality of matched fields from the data packets according to at least a protocol matching rule table and a connection hash table, wherein the connection hash table includes a hash key for matching the data packets to one of the protocol search engines with layer-2, layer-3, layer-4, and layer-7 headers selected by the protocol matching rule table; a search resolution engine electrically coupled to the protocol search engines and choosing a plurality of target fields from the matched fields with a highest priority; a packet modifier electrically coupled to the search resolution engine and modifying the packet headers; a Direct Memory Access (DMA) engine for receiving the data packets from the packet modifier; and a transmit buffer for storing the data packets transferred from the Direct Memory Access (DMA) engine.