Patent ID: 8260906

Claim:
A system including a non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising: an engine software module for at least one of sequencing and reassembling network communications; and a plurality of protocol interpreter software modules coupled to the engine module for interpreting protocols associated with the network communications, wherein at least one of the protocol interpreter modules is adapted for heuristically identifying protocols associated with the network communications using a plurality of heuristic functions, and wherein the at least one protocol interpreter software module is adapted for identifying the protocols associated with the network communications based on a port number, the port number being provisioned in a registered port table that is systematically used to evaluate the particular protocol, and wherein if the particular protocol is not identified via the registered port table then the heuristic functions are used to identify the particular protocol, the heuristic functions being provisioned in a heuristic table, which is organized based on priorities of the heuristic functions, and wherein the priorities are used to call the heuristic functions in a specific order until the particular protocol is identified and a network communication corresponding to the particular protocol is passed to the engine module for subsequent sequencing and reassembling.