COMBINED HARDWARE/SOFTWARE FORWARDING MECHANISM AND METHOD

摘要

A forwarding system comprises a identification engine, a hardware forwarding engine configured to process an ingressing packet, a software forwarding engine configured to process the ingressing packet, and a selection engine. The selection engine is configured to select one of the hardware forwarding engine or the software forwarding engine to process the ingressing packet. The selection is based on at least one of an indication of resource availability or a classification of the ingressing packet based on a priority of a flow as determined by the identification engine. In some embodiments, the selection engine selects different forwarding engines to process different packets of a same flow based on changes in resource availability or classification of the ingressing packet.

主权项

1. A method of utilizing hardware forwarding and software forwarding of network traffic, comprising:
classifying a packet based at least in part on a priority of a flow to which the packet corresponds; selecting one of a forwarding engine implemented using a processor executing machine readable instructions or a hardware forwarding engine to make a forwarding decision regarding the packet, wherein the selection is based on at least one of: i) an availability of one or more resources of the hardware forwarding engine and/or the forwarding engine implemented using the processor executing the machine readable instructions, or ii) the classification of the packet; and forwarding the packet using the selected forwarding engine