RFP-Based Research Proposal

Project ID:

RFP-2008-054

Title:

Packet Content Inspection and Flexible Structured Query Mechanisms for Advanced Network Services

Summary:

This RFP covers high-level aspects, long term research, innovative algorithms and data structures, and practical architectures related to services that require deep packet inspection, flexible structured queries, and/or pattern recognition.

Full Description:

Packet content inspection has gained widespread adoption, and a growing number of value added network services handle packets based on the payload content in addition to the structured information found in the packet header. Forwarding packets based on their content requires new levels of support in networking equipment, and a number of innovative services can be enabled with this capability, such as virus/malware detection, application-aware load balancing, security oriented filtering, and content based routing. This RFP is part of the advanced services initiative and covers the following key areas related to content inspection and pattern recognition:

1. Definition and discovery of value added services that can be enabled with content inspection; specifically those services that require characterization of network data flows by mining and analyzing the upper layer headers and payload contents to recognize and/or discover certain classes of patterns.
2. High performance architectures, algorithms and implementations of pattern matching (exact match, regular languages, etc.), flexible structured query mechanisms applied to archived as well as in-flight data, and content inspection subsystems involving critical tradeoffs and issues, such as memory size, bandwidth, processing requirements, cost, power, etc.

Proposals for both short-term applied/experimental projects, and longer term architectural or algorithmic research are welcome.

Constraints and other information:

IPR will stay with the University. Cisco expects customary scholarly dissemination of results, and hopes that promising results would be made available to the community without limiting licenses, royalties, or other encumbrances.

Proposal submission:

Please use the link below to submit a proposal for research responding to this RFP. After a preliminary review, we may ask you to revise and resubmit your proposal.

Create/submit a proposal for this RFP

RFPs may be withdrawn as research proposals are funded, or interest in the specific topic is satisfied. Researchers should plan to submit their proposals as soon as possible. Submissions-to-date are reviewed at the beginning of each quarter (the first business day of: January, April, July, October).

Questions? Contact: research@cisco.com