How to deal with range-based packet classifiers

Efficient representations of multi-field packet classifiers with fields represented by ranges is a core mechanism to express services on data plane. To implement classifiers in ternary-addressable memory (TCAM), each range should be encoded into multiple ternary bit strings whose number is at most linear to the width (in bits) of a represented field independently from range encoding method. In this paper we introduce a notion of a subrange allowing to represent a field range on any chosen subset of bit indices that significantly improve efficiency of classifier representations. Our analytic results are confirmed with a comprehensive evaluation study showing applicability of our approach to implement desired levels of expressiveness and scalability in packet classifiers.