Patent ID: 11929987
Assignee: JUNIPER NETWORKS, INC.
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 10:
11. A network device comprising:
a virtual machine interface to communicate packet flows with a host device; an
Internet Protocol (IP) interface to communicate the packet flows with an IP fabric; and
one or more processors coupled to a memory device, wherein the one or more processors are configured to:
receive a packet including a layer 2 (L2) packet header;
determine that the packet matches a first one of the packet flows that is associated with an action to redirect the packet to a firewall configured as a bump-in-the-wire;
prior to redirecting the packet to the firewall, modify a Media Access Control (MAC) address field of the L2 packet header of the packet with a flow identifier of the first one of the packet flows;
send the packet including the flow identifier to the firewall;
receive the packet including the flow identifier returned from the firewall; and
in response to receiving the packet including the flow identifier returned from the firewall, perform at least one of:
determine, when the flow identifier is included in a source MAC address field of the L2 packet header, a first virtual machine interface (VMI) from which the network device received the packet from before the packet was sent to the firewall; or
determine, when the flow identifier is included in a destination MAC address field of the L2 packet header, a second VMI by which the network device sends the packet to a destination of the packet;

determine, based on determining the first VMI or the second VMI, the L2 packet header of the packet from before the packet was sent to the firewall; and
in response to determining the L2 packet header of the packet from before the packet was sent to the firewall, modify the packet including the flow identifier to restore the L2 packet header of the packet from before the packet was sent to the firewall.