Patent ID: 11882052
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 14:
15. A network element, comprising:
a flow cache to facilitate fast-path packet processing; and
a processor to:
configure, in the flow cache, flow cache information specifying a set of actions based on a sequence of stages that is executable during slow-path packet processing;
configure, in the flow cache, dependency information specifying execution dependence or independence among actions in the set during fast-path packet processing, wherein the specified execution dependence indicates which of the actions in the set are in a dependency chain, wherein the specified execution independence indicates which of the actions in the set are outside of the dependency chain, and wherein the dependency chain indicates whether execution of an action in the dependency chain depends upon execution of another action in the dependency chain; and
in response to detecting a configuration change associated with at least one stage from the sequence of stages:
identify, from the set of actions, at least one first action in the dependency chain that is affected by the configuration change based on the execution dependence specified by the dependency information;
identify, from the set of actions, at least one second action outside of the dependency chain that is not affected by the configuration change based on the execution independence specified by the dependency information; and
perform a granular update to the flow cache information by updating the at least one first action, but not the at least one second action.