Patent ID: 7814204

Claim:
A processor device-implemented method of determining an indicator of a desired sub-class of service for resource requests, the method comprising performing the following steps in, by or for one or more processor devices: receiving the resource requests having one resource request corresponding to an OSI layer 4 and another resource request corresponding to an OSI layer 5 or higher, wherein the resource requests are embodied as or spawned by a packet, and which are accompanied by or associated with an indicator of a desired class of service for the request derived from one or more non-content, header fields of the packet; when the indicator of the desired class of service for the request indicates the desired class of service is at a layer in an applicable reference model corresponding to the OSI layer 4, refraining from performing content analysis processing of the resource request; when the indicator of the desired class of service for the request indicates the desired class of service is at a layer in an applicable reference model corresponding to the OSI layer 5 or higher, performing content analysis processing of the resource request comprising the following sub-steps: deriving a key from either or both the indicator of the desired class of service and content of the resource request, the content comprising at least a portion of the packet, or a segment encapsulating the packet, at a layer in an applicable reference model corresponding to the OSI layer 5 or higher; using the key to access a database comprising entries associating match portions of key values with indicators of a desired sub-class of service, wherein each of a plurality of the entries indicates both type of match and action to be taken upon the type of match occurring, the type of match selected from the group consisting of an exact match, and at least one wildcard match, and the action to be taken upon the type of match occurring selected from the group consisting of stop searching and continue searching; and when one or more matching database entries are located, deriving the indicator of the desired sub-class of service for the resource request from one or more of the matching entries, wherein, the resource request comprises an https header, and the key from the resource request having an https header is derived solely from the indicator of the desired class of service, and the content analysis processing of the resource request further comprises extracting a SSL identifier string from the https header for allocating a resource to the resource request.