An efficient parallel-network packet pattern-matching approach using GPUs

In the past few years, the increase in interest usage has been substantial. The high network bandwidth speed and the large amount of threats pose challenges to current network intrusion detection systems, which manage high amounts of network traffic and perform complicated packet processing. Pattern matching is a computationally intensive process included in network intrusion detection systems. In this paper, we present an efficient graphics processing unit (GPU)-based network packet pattern-matching algorithm by leveraging the computational power of GPUs to accelerate pattern-matching operations and subsequently increase the overall processing throughput. According to the experimental results, the proposed algorithm achieved a maximal traffic processing throughput of over 2 Gbit/s. The results demonstrate that the proposed GPU-based algorithm can effectively enhance the performance of network intrusion detection systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.