Patent 7095753 was granted and assigned to Bbn Technologies on August, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Multiple network processors (201, 202, 203) are connected in a pipeline via control (206) and data (205) ports of the network processors. The network processors (201, 202, 203) communicate with neighboring network processors through the control and data ports. Through these ports, the network processors can implement a variety of data flow control protocols.