FAST SOFTWARE L2 SWITCHING USING A CACHING TECHNIQUE

摘要

In a system that includes a physical forwarding element (PFE), the mapping of each possible destination MAC address to a destination port number of the PFE is stored in a mapping table. A destination port number on the PFE is identified for a first packet in a sequence of packets arrived at a source port of the PFE by searching the mapping table and stores the destination port number in a caching table. For each packet after the first packet, when the destination MAC address of the packet matches the destination MAC address stored in the caching table, the destination port number stored in the caching table is used as the destination port number of the packet. Otherwise, a destination port number for the packet is identified by searching the mapping table and the destination port number stored in the caching table is replaced with the identified destination port number.

主权项

1. A method of optimizing processing of consecutive packets with a same destination address in a sequence of packets in a system comprising a physical host, the physical host comprising virtualization software comprising a physical forwarding element (PFE), each packet comprising a destination media access control (MAC) address, the method comprising:
storing a mapping of each possible destination MAC address to a destination port number of the PFE in a mapping table; identifying a destination port number on the PFE for a first packet in the sequence of packets arrived at a source port of the PFE by searching the mapping table; storing the destination port number of the first packet in a caching table; for each packet after the first packet in the sequence of packets:
when the destination MAC address of the packet matches the destination MAC address stored in the caching table, using the destination port number stored in the caching table as the destination port number of the packet; andwhen the destination MAC address of the packet does not match the destination MAC address stored in the caching table, (i) identifying a destination port number for the packet by searching the mapping table and (ii) replacing the destination port number stored in the caching table with the destination port number of the packet identified by searching the mapping table.