LOAD BALANCING HASH COMPUTATION FOR NETWORK SWITCHES

摘要

Techniques to load balance traffic in a network device or switch include a network device or switch having a first interface to receive a data unit or packet, a second interface to transmit the packet, and a mapper to map between virtual ports and physical ports. The network device includes hash value generator configured to generate a hash value based on information included in the packet and based on at least one virtual port. The hash value may be optionally modified to load balance egress traffic of the network device. The network device selects a particular virtual port for egress of the packet, such as by determining an index into an egress table based on the (modified) hash value. The packet is transmitted from the network device using a physical port mapped to the particular virtual port.

主权项

1. A method for load balancing traffic in a network device, comprising:
receiving a data unit at the network device via a first port; determining. at the network device, an initial key based on information included in the data unit; generating a depolarized key from the initial key based on combining the initial key with a depolarizing value, the depolarizing value corresponding to the network device and unique with respect to other depolarizing values utilized in a communication network including the network device; performing a hash function on the depolarized key to determine a hash value for the data unit; and forwarding the data unit to an egress port that is selected at least partly based on the hash value.