DATA PACKET FLOW RULE FIELD RANGE OF AN APPLICATION SPECIFIC INTEGRATED CIRCUIT

1 . A method comprising:

associating a flow rule field with a range of a range table, the range table being locally stored on a programmable Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC);

storing a flow rule field value for a received data packet;

accessing the range from the range table; and

determining whether the stored flow rule field value falls within the accessed range.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

performing an action on the received data packet when it is determined that the value falls within the accessed range.

3 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the range is a first range, and wherein the method further comprises:

associating a flow rule field with a second range of the range table;

accessing the second range from the range table; and

determining whether the stored flow rule field value falls within the accessed first range or the accessed second range, or falls within both the accessed first range and the accessed second range.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

receiving, from a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controller, instructions to associate the flow rule field with the range of the range table.

5 . The method of claim 1 , wherein associating the flow rule field with the range includes creating a pointer to a memory address of the ASIC for the location of the range.

6 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the flow rule field is a Transfer Control Protocol (TCP) destination port number.

7 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the flow rule field is an Internet Protocol (IP) address.

8 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the flow rule field is a media access control (MAC) address.

9 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the act of associating, storing, accessing, and determining are performed by the ASIC.

10 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the act of determining is performed by a processor of a network switch that is separate from the ASIC.

11 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the ASIC is configurable by a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) controller.

12 . A non-transitory machine readable storage medium having stored thereon machine readable instructions to cause a computer processor of a network switch to:

associate a flow rule field with a range of a range table of a programmable Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC);

access the range from the range table when a data packet is received by the switch that includes a flow rule field value; and

compare the flow rule field value to the accessed range to determine whether the flow rule matches the received packet.

13 . The medium of claim 12 , wherein the range includes a range of sequential port numbers.

14 . A network switch comprising:

a processing resource;

a memory resource, wherein the memory resource includes machine readable instructions to:

create a pointer to a memory address of a storage medium of a programmable ASIC, the memory address including a range of values for a flow rule field;

receive a data packet to be matched against the flow rule;

determine whether a value of the flow rule field for the received data packet falls within the range of values; and

apply an action to the received data packet when it is determined that the flow rule field falls within the range of values.

15 . The network switch of claim 14 , wherein applying an action to the received data packet includes forwarding the received data packet through a specific port of a network switch in accordance with the flow rule.