1. A method, comprising: receiving, by a packet switching device, a packet including a received payload; determining an application of said received packet, with said determining including performing independent lookup operations on each of a plurality of different portions of the received payload of said received packet resulting in the determination of a first pattern match result, that is a false or non-false match of a predetermined rule, and identifying the application based on the first pattern match result, with the first pattern match result being a false match; and processing said received packet based on said identified application; wherein said performing independent lookup operations includes for each particular portion of the plurality of different portions of the received payload of said received packet: retrieving from an entry located at a position of a value of said particular portion in the received payload of said received packet in a corresponding particular memory table of a plurality of memory tables to retrieve a corresponding partial result, with each corresponding particular memory table being different for each of the plurality of different portions; and wherein the application is an application-layer application.