Hi Harald and list! I patched the init_conntrack function to optimize the expectation handling. With this patch, if an expectation is not found for the conntrack, it will look for an helper and go out, this way we save three "if's". By other hand, if an expectation is found we save one "if". I consider that the general case is that an expectation is not found, isn't it? because most connection tracked by the system don't need a helper, so they not need to handle expectations. BTW, can we consider that if there's no helper for a given tuple, it won't have expectations? because while writing the patch i had more ideas, maybe this could be optimized a bit more. Well, I'm not sure... hope that i'm not missing anything! if so, please let me know. cheers, Pablo