Time transformed machine for high speed computer network performance measurement

Fiber optic transmission media can deliver broadband network performance measurement data at a rate faster than economically available electronics components can process them. Commercial implementations seek to limit the amount of high-speed, high-cost electronics needed to recognize the performance parameters in the bit stream passing a monitoring point. A means is presented here for transforming these finite state recognizers into new machines that perform the same function but operate at slower speed for implementation in reconfigurable hardware. This is accomplished by mapping N-bit sets from the input stream into new symbols that can be processed at rate 1/N while also generating N-bit output symbols. The process is illustrated by example and a time versus space tradeoff analysis is presented