ePAPP: a gigabit embedded protocol analyzer pre-processor

Network has been growing rapidly in both transmission bandwidth and transmission speed. This increase in speed reduces processing time a network device has for each packet. This paper presents a hardware embedded protocol analyzer pre-processor (ePAPP) that performs the protocol analysis of network packets. It replaces the software protocol analysis program running on processors, with a significant performance increase, and protocol adaptation flexibility. A prototype of ePAPP supporting various protocols including Ethernet, IPv4, ARP, TCP, and UDP, has been designed in VHDL and synthesized. When implemented on the NEC instant silicon solutions platform (ISSP), a structured ASIC technology based on 0.13-micron process, ePPAP can achieve 2.88 Gb/s processing rate, using less than 1% of available logic cells.