Patent ID: 9253140
Filing Date: 2016-02-02
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method, comprising: receiving, at a Top-Of-Rack (ToR) switch, an advertisement from a directly attached host belonging to a subnet of a network environment, wherein the advertisement seeks a Media Access Control (MAC) address of a remote host in the subnet, wherein the remote host is directly attached to another ToR switch in the subnet; terminating the advertisement at an advertise module of the ToR switch; looking up, by a lookup module in the ToR switch, a host information database in a control plane of the ToR switch for the MAC address of the remote host, wherein the host information database includes host information, including MAC addresses of other hosts in the subnet received from other ToR switches; mapping a segment identifier of the subnet to the MAC address of the remote host in a layer 2 table in the ToR switch's data plane; responding, by the advertise module, to the advertisement with the MAC address of the remote host; and electing not to respond to the advertisement if the MAC address is not found in the host information database.