Multi-objective evolution of hash functions for high speed networks

Hashing is a critical function in capturing and analysis of network flows as its quality and execution time influences the maximum throughput of network monitoring devices. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective linear genetic programming approach to evolve fast and high-quality hash functions for common processors. The search algorithm simultaneously optimizes the quality of hashing and the execution time. As it is very time consuming to obtain the real execution time for a candidate solution on a particular processor, the execution time is estimated in the fitness function. In order to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach, evolved hash functions are compared with hash functions available in the literature using real-world network data.