Patent ID: 9667593
Date: 2017-05-30
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A method of facilitating communications within a processing environment, said method comprising: indicating that a virtual interface of the processing environment is to be monitored, the indicating employing a refresh primitive, the refresh primitive comprising a start subcommand to indicate monitoring is to be performed, wherein the indicating further specifies a scope for the monitoring, the scope comprising an interface scope in which inbound traffic and outbound traffic for a connection identifier of the virtual interface are monitored, or an address scope in which inbound traffic and outbound traffic for a particular address of the virtual interface are monitored; monitoring, for a predetermined amount of time, inbound and outbound traffic on the virtual interface; determining based on the monitoring whether for a selected component of the virtual interface an inbound frame has been received on the virtual interface but no outbound frame has been transmitted on the virtual interface to an external network device for the predefined amount of time; and based on determining that the inbound frame has been received on the virtual interface but no outbound frame has been transmitted on the virtual interface for the predefined amount of time, forwarding a generated outbound frame to cause a refresh of address registration information for the virtual interface to ensure that the address registration information is maintained.