A method for in-band de-duplication, the method may include receiving by a hardware accelerator, a received packet of a first sequence of packets that conveys a first data chunk; applying a data chunk hash calculation process on the received packet while taking into account a hash calculation result obtained when applying the data chunk hash calculation process on a last packet of the first sequence that preceded the received packet; wherein the calculating of the first data chunk hash value is initiated before a completion of a reception of the entire first data chunk by the hardware accelerator.