Through Jamaica with a Kodak (1907)

A network processor unit (NPU) is a programmable device that consists of several hardware accelerators for wire-speed networking operations. One of the most important functional units in an NPU is packet classification unit (PCU) that classifies data packets based on single or multiple fields of packet header or contents in payload data. Large number of tasks in computer communication require packet classification. Network packet classification requires two types of matching techniques: (i) exact and (ii) inexact match. There are two solutions for exact match: (i) sequential and (ii) parallel solutions. Inexact match can be of two types: (i) Longest prefix match and (ii) Best match. This dissertation talks about these four techniques required for the PCU. For the sequential solution, we propose a string search algorithm that requires reduced time complexity. It also requires a small amount of memory, and shows better performance than any other related algorithms as proved by numerical analysis and extensive computer simulations.