Efficient network packet signature matching on GPUs

Abstract

Network signature matching is an important task in many applications such as network security or traffic analysis, which generally rely on a flexible signature matching system to extract important packet information from each processed packet. This task is computation and data intensive, and requires significant processing time in sequential manner. In order to accelerate signature matching of giga-bit network traffic, we aim to exploit the inherent parallelism of signature matching through the use of parallel graphics processor units. In this paper, we present detailed analysis of signature matching along with the system design for parallel graphics processors(GPUs). The signature matching schema proposed is based on port matching and keyword matching in each packet header. A real system on graphics processor units was implemented to evaluate the efficacy of our design. Experimental results proved that signature matching can be efficiently done on graphics processor units.