Patent ID: 9565105
Date: 2017-02-07
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A method, comprising: receiving, at a Top-Of-Rack (ToR) switch, a packet encapsulated with a virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN) header from a virtual tunnel endpoint (VTEP) having an unknown VTEP-Internet Protocol (IP) address in a network environment; converting, by the ToR switch, the unknown VTEP-IP address to a smaller sized VTEP index (VTEP-IDX) serving as a unique identifier of the VTEP having the unknown VTEP-IP address; and installing an entry at an index location of a forwarding table, wherein the index location comprises the VTEP-IDX, wherein the entry maps a combination of a VXLAN network identifier (VNI) and an IP address indicated in an inner header of the packet to a bridge domain (BD) corresponding to a VXLAN interface, wherein the entry in the forwarding table is used by encapsulation and decapsulation processes at the ToR switch for deriving a destination VTEP IP address and source VTEP IP address of subsequent packets to and from the VTEP, respectively.