An ANIC adapter can optionally perform flow classification on each incoming packet. If this feature is enabled, information on up to 16 million unique flows is maintained in onboard memory as part of a lookup or flow table. For each new flow a unique “flow id” is generated such that the same id is calculated for both directions of a bi-directional flow. Information such as total packet count, total byte count and the last time a packet was seen is maintained for each and every one of the up to 16 million identified flows.

A flow is identified by either a 5-tuple (source IP address, source TCP/UDP port, destination IP address, destination TCP/UDP port and IP protocol) or a 3-tuple (source IP address, destination IP address, IP protocol).

Flow Based Filtering

If flow classification is enabled, an ANIC adapter can be configured to filter out (i.e. drop) or filter in (i.e. only forward matching flows) the desired traffic flows. This capability enables security features such as blacklist matching. In addition, flows can be marked for steering to a specific host packet buffer(s).