Abstract: A novel and useful dynamic packet filter that can be incorporated in a hardware based firewall suitable for use in portable computing devices such as cellular telephones and wireless connected PDAs adapted to connect to the Internet. The invention performs dynamic packet filtering on packets received over an input packet stream. The dynamic filter checks dynamic protocol behavior using information extracted from the received packet. Sessions are created and stored in a session database to track the state of communications between the source and destination. Recognition of a session is accelerated by use of a hash table to quickly determine the corresponding session record in the session database. Session related data is read from the session database and the received packet is checked against a set of rules to determine whether to allow or deny the packet.

Abstract: A novel and useful dynamic packet filter that can be incorporated in a hardware based firewall suitable for use in portable computing devices such as cellular telephones and wireless connected PDAs that are adapted to connect to the Internet. The invention performs dynamic packet filtering on packets received over an input packet stream. The dynamic filter checks dynamic protocol behavior using information extracted from the received packet. Sessions are created and stored in a session database to track the state of communications between the source and destination. Recognition of a session is accelerated by use of a hash table to quickly determine the corresponding session record in the session database. Session related data is read from the session database and the received packet is checked against a set of rules for determination of whether to allow or deny the packet.

Abstract: An arbiter of an I/O controller implements an arbitration process for controlling bi-directional data flow between a local area network and a main memory connected to a system bus having variable latency. A receive state machine of the controller manages inbound data bursts from the network by temporarily storing the data in a receive buffer before transfer to the main memory. Outbound data bursts from the main memory are managed by a transmit state machine of the controller, and are temporarily stored in a transmit buffer prior to transmission onto the network. The arbitration process assigns each of the receive and transmit state machines priority for accessing the system bus depending upon certain status conditions of the controller.