I've tried it these ways so far:

1) Make a hash with the source IP/port and destination IP/port as keys. Each position in the hash is a list of packets. The hash is then saved in a file, with each flow separated by some special characters/line. Problem: Not enough memory for large traces.

2) Make a hash with the same key as above, but only keep in memory the file handles. Each packet is then put into the hash[key] that points to the right file. Problems: Too many flows/files (~200k) and it might run out of memory as well.

3) Hash the source IP/port and destination IP/port, then put the info inside a file. The difference between 2 and 3 is that here the files are opened and closed for each operation, so I don't have to worry about running out of memory because I opened too many at the same time. Problems: WAY too slow, same number of files as 2 so also impractical.

4) Make a hash of the source IP/port pairs and then iterate over the whole trace for each flow. Take the packets that are part of that flow and place them into the output file. Problem: Suppose I have a 60 MB trace that has 200k flows. This way, I would process, say, a 60 MB file 200k times. Maybe removing the packets as I iterate would make it not so painful, but so far I'm not sure this would be a good solution.

5) Split them by IP source/destination and then create a single file for each one, separating the flows by special characters. Still too many files (+50k).

Right now I'm using Ruby to do it, which might've been a bad idea, I guess. Currently I've filtered the traces with tshark so that they only have relevant info, so I can't really make them any smaller.

I thought about loading everything in memory as described in 1) using C#/Java/C++, but I was wondering if there wouldn't be a better approach here, especially since I might also run out of memory later on even with a more efficient language if I have to use larger traces.

In summary, the problem I'm facing is that I either have too many files or that I run out of memory.

I've also tried searching for some tool to filter the info, but I don't think there is one. The ones I've found only return some statistics and wouldn't scan for every flow as I need.