A fast and scalable IPv6 packet classification

In order to support more value-added services and a larger space for IP addresses, the Internet requries to classify IPv6 packets into flows for specific requirements. High performance IPv6 packet classification (PC) algorithms are therefore in high demand. This paper proposes a new IPv6 PC algorithm based on flow label (FL), called FLIN (Flow Label Initial Noticed). FLIN is fast and scalable with small memory requirements. This paper also suggests an IPv6 PC design method aimed at the features of FL. The experiment results show that FLIN achieves a great improvement in optimizing IPv6 PC performance, especially in the case that a large number of different rules have equivalent FL values at the same time.