Patent ID: 7133931

Claim:
A system for altering an information unit in a network processing system, the system comprising: a substrate including a plurality of processors carried thereon, said processors for receiving input information units from the network and preparing processed information units for transmission to the network; a dispatcher carried on the substrate and coupled to the plurality of processors for receiving input information units from the network, determining availability of at least one of the plurality of processors to process information units and transmitting at least one of the information units for processing to the at least one of the plurality of processors; a completion unit carried on the substrate and coupled to the plurality of processors, said completion unit receiving a processed information from the plurality of processors and for communicating the processed information units to the network in the same order in which said units were received; and a subassembly carried on the substrate for making selective alterations to the information units, said subassembly coupled to the completion unit and the network for modifying the information units and including: a control word associated with each frame to be altered containing an indicator for each of the desired alterations; hardware devices to identify some alterations as fixed to the frame of data and to alter said some alterations in accordance with a fixed alteration resulting from the hardware devices; and software programming including stored algorithms to identify other alterations as variable alterations and to alter such other alterations on the information unit.