DeepMatch: practical deep packet inspection in the data plane using network processors

Restricting data plane processing to packet headers precludes analysis of payloads to improve routing and security decisions. DeepMatch delivers line-rate regular expression matching on payloads using Network Processors (NPs). It further supports packet reordering to match patterns in flows that cross packet boundaries. Our evaluation shows that an implementation of DeepMatch, on a 40 Gbps Netronome NFP-6000 SmartNIC, achieves up to line rate for streams of unrelated packets and up to 20 Gbps when searches span multiple packets within a flow. In contrast with prior work, this throughput is data-independent and adds no burstiness. DeepMatch opens new opportunities for programmable data planes.