Importance

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Abstract

A system and method are provided for managing information concerning a network flow comprising packets sent from a source entity to a destination entity served by a network interface. A network flow is established for each datagram sent from the source entity to the destination entity. A flow key, identifying the source and destination entities, is stored in a data structure along with information concerning validity of the flow, sequence of data in the flow datagram and how recently the flow was active. Once a flow is established, it is updated each time a packet containing data from the flow's datagram is received. When such a packet is received, an operation code is generated for identifying whether the packet is suitable for a particular network interface function. An operation code may, for example, indicate that a packet contains data to be re-assembled with other data from the same flow. Another operation code may indicate that a packet is not suitable for data re-assembly. Another operation code may specify that the packet is simply a control packet, has no data, or that the packet was received out of order.

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First Claim