Patent ID: 7561569

Claim:
A method for converting packet streams into session summaries comprising the steps of: a. capturing packets from a transport layer, b. decoding the packets to determine the destination IP address and the source IP address, c. identifying packets having common destination IP addresses and source IP addresses, d. writing the decoded packets to an allocated memory structure as session summaries in a queue wherein said session summaries contain only packets having common destination and source IP addresses, e. creating a series of time buckets, each of the time buckets having a predefined beginning time and a predefined end time, wherein the time buckets are sequential in time, f. associating new session summaries with the time bucket covering the time period corresponding to the time the packet was captured from the transport layer, and g. moving a session summary to the time bucket at the front of the queue in response to an incoming packet having a destination IP addresses and source IP addresses matching the session summary.