Patent ID: 7613133

Claim:
A method of processing an inbound packet at one of a plurality of interfaces to a forwarder, comprising the steps of: a. assigning during a system start-up process at run time, to each of the interfaces, a set of processing modules, wherein each of the interfaces is adapted to a different communications protocol, and selection of the set of processing modules for each of the interfaces is based on packet processing requirements of the respective interfaces; b. receiving the packet from the one of the plurality of interfaces; c. determining if a first processing module is to be executed; d. if so, executing the first processing module; e. if the packet is discarded, returning packet resources to the one of the plurality of interfaces; and f. if the packet is neither consumed nor discarded, determining if a next processing module is to be executed and, if so, executing the next processing module before processing by the forwarder.