METHOD FOR PROCESSING MESSAGE AND FORWARDER

摘要

Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for processing a packet in a software-defined network (Software-Defined Network), where the method is performed by a forwarder, and the method includes: receiving an input packet; determining a flow to which the input packet belongs according to the input packet; determining a context identifier set corresponding to the flow to which the input packet belongs according to a first correspondence between flows and context identifier sets, where a context identifier set corresponding to each flow in the first correspondence includes at least one context identifier; determining a context corresponding to the context identifier set according to a second correspondence between context identifiers and contexts; and processing the input packet according to the context corresponding to the context identifier set. In the embodiments of the present invention, a flow is not directly associated with a context, and even when multiple flows share a context, this context does not need to be saved for multiple times, and under a hardware condition the same as that in the conventional technology, a storage capability and a processing capability of a forwarder are greatly improved in the embodiments of the present invention.