Patent ID: 8769152

Claim:
A method for a network diagnostic component that is placed in-line between first and second nodes in a network to compress pre-specified primitive Dwords, the method comprising: an act of receiving a network data stream for communication between the first and second nodes, wherein the network data stream comprises Data Dwords interspersed with at least one pre-specified primitive Dword, wherein the Data Dwords include data being transmitted from the first node to the second node and the at least one primitive Dword includes information that is used to configure the communication between the first and second node; an act of associating the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword with an identifier value that represents the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword, wherein the identifier value for the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword is specific to the at least one primitive Dword and is different from the identifier values for other primitive Dwords; an act of replacing the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword with the identifier value, and recording, as part of a compression capture record along with the Data Dwords, the identifier value representing the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword in a memory in place of the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword represented by the identifier value using fewer bits than the pre-specified primitive Dword, such that the at least one pre-specified primitive Dword represented by the identifier value is not recorded as part of the compression capture record for saving memory; conducting network diagnostic functions on the compression capture record; reconstructing the network data stream with the primitive Dwords; and transmitting the network data stream to the second node, wherein the step of reconstructing the network data stream comprises reconstructing the exact data stream received from the first node.