Patent ID: 8638793

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a packet processing engine configured to (i) parse headers of received data units, and (ii) analyze parsed headers of received data units to classify the received data units; a comparator engine to process received data units in parallel with the packet processing engine, the comparator engine including a comparison logic unit to compare at least a portion of a currently received header of a currently received data unit to one or more header patterns without first parsing the at least a portion of the currently received header, wherein the one or more header patterns correspond to at least one or more portions of one or more previously analyzed headers of one or more previously analyzed data units, and a match indication generator to generate a match indication if the at least a portion of the currently received header matches at least one of the one or more header patterns; and a result generator to cause the currently received data unit to be processed based on the previously analyzed data unit if the match indication is generated; wherein the packet processing engine is configured not to further process the currently received data unit in response to the match indication indicating a match between the at least a portion of the currently received header and the at least one of the one or more header patterns.