Patent ID: 8179792

Claim:
A method to de-duplicate packets in a packet stream comprising: determining hash values for the packets and comparing a recent one of the hash values for a recent one of the packets to a list of previous ones of the hash values for previous ones of the packets; if the recent hash value does not match any of the previous hash values in the list, then loading the recent packet into a FIFO buffer and loading the recent hash value into the list of the previous hash values; if the recent hash value matches one of the previous hash values in the list, then comparing the recent packet to the previous packet associated with the matching one of the previous hash values; if the recent packet does not match the previous packet associated with the matching previous hash value, then loading the recent packet into the FIFO buffer and loading the recent hash value into the list of the previous hash values; if the recent packet matches the previous packet associated with the matching previous hash value, then not loading the recent packet into the FIFO buffer and not loading the recent hash value into the list of the previous hash values; transferring an oldest one of the previous packets from the FIFO buffer, and in response, removing an oldest one of the hash values for the oldest one of the packets from the list of the previous hash values; and determining a size of the FIFO buffer based on a number of ports being mirrored to a computer system.