Systems and methods are disclosed that allow for improved management and control of packet forwarding in network systems. Network devices and tool optimizers and a related systems and methods are disclosed for improved packet forwarding between input ports and output ports. The input ports and output ports are configured to be connected to source devices and destination devices, for example, network sources and destination tools in a network monitoring environment. The network devices and tool optimizers disclosed can use a packet processing system whereby forwarding behavior is governed by matching packets in parallel against multiple user-specified packet filtering criteria, and by performing forwarding actions associated with all such matching filter criteria. The multi-action packet forwarding can be implemented using hardware configured to directly provide multi-action packet forwarding and/or hardware configured to provide single-packet-forwarding that has been subsequently configured using filter engines to provide multi-action packet forwarding.