Patent ID: 11929897
Assignee: VMWARE LLC
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 14:
15. A system comprising:
a network;
a set of switches;
a set of servers;
a plurality of agents; and
an underlay controller that programs the set of switches in the network to perform multicast distribution of packets by:
determining that a packet comprises a special header corresponding to a multicast (“MC”) group;
determining that the special header includes an identifier of a switch in the set of switches;
identifying a bitmap associated with the identifier of the switch; and
using the bitmap, determining one or more ports of the switch to replicate the packet on;

the plurality of agents sending MC packets to the plurality of load balancers via the set of switches by including the special header, the multicast packets including load statistics data of the set of servers;
at least one of the plurality of load balancers:
receiving a multicast packet replica comprising load statistics data of the set of servers,
receiving a task; and
distributing the task to one of the servers based at least in part on the load statistics data.