Development of network interface card using multicore processor for enhancing packet filtering performance

초록

This paper presents a method for enhancing packet filtering performance using multicore processor. Recently, the quantity of network traffic has been increased over 1Gbps. However, the maximum capacity to process the traffic is under 300Mbps in most software security solutions. To solve this problem, some vendors of Intrusion Protection Systems (IPSs) or firewalls adopt Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology for packet filtering. However, it is difficult to process packets in high level task such as signature based pattern matching in FPGA cards. We present a method of embedding a core of multicore processor to a new network interface card in order to filter packets effectively on the hardware side. It filters and distinguishes the packets before they are passed to the software engine. The proposed method enables a maximized filtering effect. If there are heterogeneous multi-functional requirements from software solutions, we can load the multi software engines simultaneously and implement the independent filtering functions in each engine. The proposed network interface card filters meaningless packets. It is effective to set up the filters on the hardware side. It can guarantee optimal performance. This study shows how the filtering method has been developed and how much the performance has been improved as a result. The implemented network interface card using multicore processor enables the extended capacity of packet filtering and more efficient performance. © 2014 ISSN 2185-2766.

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