Patent ID: 8050181

Claim:
A method for a network diagnostic device to perform a real time comparison operation, the method comprising: an act of the network diagnostic device receiving a network data frame from a first node in a network for communication with a second node in the network, the network data frame comprising one or more data dwords interspersed with one or more primitive dwords, wherein the data dwords include data being transmitted from the first node to the second node and the primitive dwords include information that is used to configure the communication between the first and second nodes; an act of the network diagnostic device using a user-defined starting address that specifies where in the data frame to begin the comparison operation, wherein the starting address is configured to specify any single data dword as the start location regardless of its position in the data frame; an act of the network diagnostic device using a user-defined ending address that specifies where in the data frame to end the comparison operation, wherein the ending address is configured to specify any single data dword as the end location regardless of its position in the data frame; an act of the network diagnostic device using a match template that specifies a particular condition for comparison, wherein the comparison condition is configured to specify one or more of: a single data dword, a portion of a single data dword, a plurality of data dwords, and an operation that defines the comparison condition; an act of the network diagnostic performing a comparison operation by searching for one or more data dwords or portions of data dwords in the portion of the data frame specified by the starting and ending addresses that at least partially matches the comparison condition of the match template; and an act of determining any differences between the one or more data dwords or portions of data dwords in the portion of the data frame specified by the starting and ending addresses and the comparison condition of the match template to identify defects in the network; wherein the starting and ending addresses are expressed as a number of dwords deep into the network data frame.