Abstract: A method for storing and updating records in a first table containing information corresponding to specific nodes of a network, and in a second table containing information corresponding to a combination of two specific nodes on a network, by indexing the first table with hashed forms of the node addresses, and the second table with hashed forms of a concatenation of the two node addresses, interleaving reads between the two tables to account for memory latency, and using the results of previous reads to reduce the number of future reads necessary for locating and updating the tables' records.

Abstract: Data communication packets are processed to determined whether they match network protocols using a parser table and a predictive parser. The parser table is encoded from production rules derived from a network protocol definition. Packets comprise data elements each having an offset from the beginning of the packet and a data value. The parser table is indexed by these offsets and data values, each location in the table containing a value indicating whether a data element at the offset and having the data value is a valid element for the network protocol definition. Once encoded, the parser table is used with the predictive parser which receives data elements of a data packet from a network source. The predictive parser uses the offset and data value of each data element to obtain the encoded value in the parser table. The predictive parser updates a parser stack according to the value from the parser table and the current value of the parser stack.