Patent ID: 8046492

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, in a network device, a filter registration request from a control software element, of the network device, where the filter registration request includes at least a field name and a filter value; identifying, by the network device and based on a table, an offset value associated with the field name, included in the filter registration request, where the table maps the field name to the offset value; generating, by the network device, a filter based on the filter value and the identified offset value; filtering, by the network device and using the generated filter, a message, where the filtering includes: identifying a first portion of the message based on the identified offset value, and comparing the filter value to the portion of the message to determine whether the filter value matches the first portion of the message; updating, by the network device, the table to map the field name to another offset value; generating, by the network device, another filter based on the filter value and the other offset value; and filtering, by the network device and using the other filter, another message.