Patent ID: 7937756

Claim:
An apparatus to facilitate network security and traffic monitoring for input network traffic, comprising: a plurality of microcode controlled state machines, each of said plurality of microcode controlled state machines including a computation kernel, wherein a plurality of rules to be applied to a network traffic segment are distributed across said computation kernels such that each of said computation kernels includes condition logic configured by microcode stored in an associated control store to evaluate evaluates a unique configured rule in said microcode stored in an associated control store to produce an associated output, wherein said condition logic includes: a condition analysis circuit configured to compare a first value of an internal state variable stored by said condition logic and updated based on network traffic conditions to a second value stored by said condition logic to evaluate a behavioral rule associated with network traffic conditions; a distribution circuit to route said network traffic segment to each of said plurality of microcode controlled state machines; an aggregation circuit to generate a decision on which forwarding of said network traffic segment is based, wherein said decision is a logical combination of said associated output of each of said computation kernels; and an output circuit, wherein said distribution circuit provides said network traffic segment directly to said output circuit for forwarding, bypassing said plurality of microcode controlled state machines, in response to receiving said decision from said aggregation circuit.