1. A standalone cache unit for caching data operations requested from one or more networked data storage devices by one or more remote clients, the standalone cache unit comprising: a cache memory for caching data that is requested by a remote client, the cache memory storing a plurality of index tables and a connection state table for each connection used to cache data in the cache memory; a packet processor coupled to the cache memory and to one or more I/O ports for transparently splicing connections between the data storage devices and remote clients, where the packet processor inspects network protocol traffic state parameters received on the I/O ports to determine if a request from a remote client can be serviced by the standalone cache unit by extracting connection information from each received packet and generating first and second hash values from the connection information, where the first hash value is used to point to an addressed index table from the plurality of index tables, and where the second hash value is stored as an index to an entry in the addressed index table which also stores a connection data index value which is used to point to an address for the connection state table corresponding to the received packet.