US Patent 8005966 Data processing system using internet protocols

Disclosed are systems employing an architecture that provides capabilities to transport and process Internet Protocol (IP) packets from Layer 2 through transport protocol processing and may also perform packet inspection through Layer 7. A set of engines may perform pass-through packet classification, policy processing and/or security processing enabling packet streaming through the architecture at nearly the full line rate. A scheduler schedules packets to packet processors for processing. An internal memory or local session database cache stores a session information database for a certain number of active sessions. The session information that is not in the internal memory is stored and retrieved to/from an additional memory.