Direct Accessible Filter Using Succinct Data Structure for Packet Filtering

Packet filtering is a function to determine whether a packet is allowed to forward or not by applying rules to a packet. Filtering packets can improve security and performance. Linear search is the simplest and a storage-efficient algorithm. The time to filter a packet grows linearly with the number of rules. If an action list which stores actions (allow or drop) for all manner of packet headers is pre-computed from a rule set, routers can filter a packet in constant time. The list is called Direct Accessible Filter (DAF) in this paper. However, DAF requires large storage. This paper proposes DAF using succinct data structures which are low storage requirement and support fast query. We apply succinct representation techniques to DAF and aim at low storage requirement. Theoretical and experimental results show that DAF using succinct data structure enjoys low storage requirement and constant search speed.