Patent ID: 7904642

Claim:
A method of storing in a database a plurality of rules associated with one or more access control lists (ACLs), the method comprising: providing the plurality of rules, wherein each rule includes a number of packet header fields each containing a corresponding entry; selectively combining the plurality of rules into one or more groups depending upon similarities between the entries within each field; and storing the groups in the database including a content addressable memory (CAM) device and a random access memory (RAM), wherein the storing comprises: for each rule field, storing only one instance of each of its corresponding field values in the CAM device so that each field value stored in the CAM device is unique; for each field value stored in the CAM device, storing a field label in the RAM device, wherein each field label indicates which groups the corresponding field value belongs to; for each group, storing a concatenation of the field labels belonging to the group as a group label in the CAM device; and for each group label stored in the CAM device, storing a group identification (ID) in the RAM device.