1. An apparatus for providing security and monitoring in a networking architecture, comprising: a physical layer interface including a physical layer receiver and a decoder for converting physical layer data from said physical layer receiver to input data to subsequent data link layer processing, wherein said decoder includes: a plurality of microcode controlled state machines, each of said plurality of microcode controlled state machines including a computation kernel, wherein a plurality of rules to be applied to said physical layer data are distributed across said computation kernels such that at least one of said computation kernels is configured to evaluate a unique configured rule in microcode stored in an associated control store to generate an associated output indicating whether predetermined information in at least one of an IP packet header and an IP packet payload has been located within said physical layer data, such that corresponding processing at the network layer or above is bypassed; a distribution circuit to route said physical layer data to said plurality of microcode controlled state machines; a circuit to generate said input data to said subsequent data link layer processing from said physical layer data based on said associated output of said at least one of said computation kernels; and a controller for provisioning said physical layer interface with said plurality of rules; wherein each of said computation kernels includes condition logic configured by said microcode to evaluate said unique configured rule to produce said associated output; and said condition logic includes a condition check circuit configured by said microcode to compare said network traffic segment to at least a portion of an associated signature, wherein said condition check circuit operates independently of co-processors including a content addressable memory and a network processor.