Patent ID: 8060633

Claim:
A method for identifying data content, comprising: establishing, by a data processing device, a character base, wherein the character base stores characters corresponding to various service applications and protocols; performing, by the data processing device, matching between contents of currently received data and the characters in the character base, and obtaining characters contained in the currently received data; and identifying, by the data processing device, at least one of a service application and a protocol corresponding to the characters contained in the currently received data according to a mapping relation between characters and protocols as well as a mapping relation between characters and service applications; wherein identifying at least one of the service application and the protocol corresponding to the characters contained in the currently received data comprises, determining whether each character contained in the currently received data can exist at an identified protocol layer of former data in a session to which the currently received data belongs, if the character can exist at the identified protocol layer of the former data in the session to which the currently received data belongs, identifying the service application or protocol corresponding to the character, otherwise, ignoring the character.