A system and method is provided for providing an initial determination of the type of application recognition processing that is required for incoming traffic, and directing the packets accordingly. The invention is based on optimized resource allocation that uses multiple, application-dependent data paths. An exemplary set of application-dependent data paths includes, for example, Fixed Attribute Table (FAT), Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and CPU Processing data paths. By using optimized and application-dependent network traffic processing paths, it is possible to achieve a less resource-hungry hardware design than previously contemplated in the prior art, where all traffic proceeded along a single path and was subjected to DPI processing.