When application awareness is not required, but requires other AA value added functions (for example, TCP-O, DEM), significant performance can be gained by not performing pattern or behavior-based identification. A shallow inspection configuration option can disable AA Layer 7 classification to increase throughput performance for deployments that can operate using only AA Layer 3 and Layer 4 shallow flow inspection. This configuration disables all signature-based flow inspection. This configuration can be used with TCP optimization, Dynamic Experience Management, Layer 3 and Layer 4 application filter classification, and Dynamic Experience Management.