A Fast, Smart Packet Classification Algorithm Based on Decomposition

Packet classification algorithms have been the focus of research for the last few years, due to the vital role they play in various services based on packet forwarding. However, as the number of rules in the rule set increases, not only the preprocessing time but also the memory consumption is increasing greatly. In this paper, we first model and analyze the above issue in depth. Then, a fast, smart packet classification algorithm based on decomposition is proposed. By boundary-based rule traversal and smart rule set partitioning, both the preprocessing time and memory consumption are reduced dramatically. Experimental results show that the preprocessing time of our method achieves 8.8-time improvement at maximum compared with the PCIU and achieves about 31.5-time improvement on average compared with CutSplit for large rule sets. Meanwhile, the memory overhead is reduced by 40% at maximum and 27.5% on average compared with the PCIU.