Patent ID: 8800021

Claim:
A method comprising: accessing, by a firewall device and based on a filter specification, a first hardware-implemented filter of a plurality of hardware-implemented filters included in the firewall device, the filter specification identifying a sequence of hardware attachment points of the firewall device, each attachment point, of the sequence of attachment points, being associated with a corresponding hardware-implemented filter of the plurality of hardware-implemented filters, and a hardware implementation, of each hardware-implemented filter, limiting the hardware-implemented filter to being associated with a maximum quantity of rules; processing, by the firewall device, a packet using the first hardware-implemented filter, the packet being processed based on first information included in the packet and a type of filter associated with the first-hardware implemented filter; accessing, by the firewall device and based on the filter specification, a second hardware-implemented filter of the plurality of hardware-implemented filters; determining, by the firewall device, whether a last rule, associated with the first hardware-implemented filter, includes a split-filter action, the split-filter action identifying the second hardware-implemented filter; processing, by the firewall device and when the last rule does not include the split-filter action, the packet based on second information included in the packet and a type of filter associated with the second hardware-implemented filter; and when the last rule includes the split-filter action: linking, by the firewall device, the second hardware-implemented filter to the first hardware-implemented filter to cause the second hardware-implemented filter to be a logical continuation of the first hardware-implemented filter, processing, by the firewall device and based on linking the second hardware-implemented filter, the packet based on the first information and the type of filter associated with the first hardware-implemented filter.