Patent ID: 11936563
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A method of processing packets on a host computer, the method comprising:
on the host computer:
defining a plurality of layer 2 (L2) or layer 3 (L3) packet-processing threads, each thread for execution by one processing unit of the host computer and performing a set of one or more L2 or L3 packet-processing operations based on L2 or L3 forwarding rules;
assigning each port of a plurality of ports of a software forwarding element (SFE) executing on the host computer to one L2 or L3 packet-processing thread, wherein at least two different ports are assigned to two different L2 or L3 packet-processing threads, the SFE receiving packets from each port; and
directing the L2 or L3 packet-processing thread associated with each port to poll the port to obtain packets received by the port and using the L2 or L3 forwarding rules to perform packet-processing operations on the obtained packets in order to forward the packets.