TCAM-based DFA deflation: A novel approach to fast and scalable regular expression matching

Abstract

Regular expression matching is the foundation of many network functions including intrusion detection, worm detection, traffic analysis and so on, where known patterns such as worm fingerprints are characterized using regular expressions and searched in network traffic for pattern match. As the quantity and diversity of known patterns keep increasing, regular expression pattern sets have rapidly grown in both size and complexity, while having to be matched in network traffic at accelerating wire speeds. Fast and scalable regular expression matching, therefore, is fundamental to the development of practical network systems.