Patent ID: 9455901
Filing Date: 2016-09-27
CPC Classification: G06F,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A system for controlling forwarding elements, the system comprising: a network controller to generate and send forwarding instructions to a plurality of forwarding elements including software and hardware forwarding elements, said forwarding elements implementing at least one virtual network; and a service node (i) to receive an unknown unicast packet for a particular virtual network sent from a software or hardware forwarding element in the plurality of forwarding elements based on the forwarding instructions, (ii) to replicate the unknown unicast packet, and (iii) to send the unknown unicast packet to each hardware forwarding element in a first set of forwarding elements comprising at least two hardware forwarding elements from which the service node did not receive the unknown unicast packet, wherein a hardware forwarding element in the first set of forwarding elements outputs the unknown unicast packet to a port of the hardware forwarding element when the hardware forwarding element identifies the port as being connected to a machine with an address that is the same as a destination address of the unknown unicast packet.