Implementation of a Streaming Content Search-and-Replace Module for an Internet Firewall

James Moscola, Michael Pachos, John Lockwood, Ronald Loui

Abstract

A module has been implemented in Field Programmable Gate Array(FPGA) hardware that is able to perform regular expression searchand replace on the contents of Internet packets at Gigabit/secondrates. All of the packet processing operations are performed usingreconfigurable hardware within a single Xilinx Virtex XCV2000EFPGA. A set of layered protocol wrappers is used to parse theheaders and payloads of packets for Internet protocol data. Acontent matching server automatically generates the Finite StateMachines (FSMs) to search for regular expressions. The completesystem is operated on the Field-programmable Port Extender (FPX)platform.

Keywords:

High speed packet processing engines