Patent ID: 9608877
Date: 2017-03-28
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A network device, comprising: a packet input unit configured to receive ingress packets, the ingress packets having an ingress packet identifying characteristic; a checking unit configured to determine whether the identifying characteristic of a received ingress packet matches a stored identifying characteristic of a packet flow that is stored in a memory, to perform on the received ingress packet a network action, associated with the stored identifying characteristic when the identifying characteristic of the received ingress packet matches the stored identifying characteristic, that causes the received ingress packet having the identifying characteristic that matches the stored identifying characteristic to bypass a control plane processor, without communicating the received ingress packet to the control plane processor, wherein the received ingress packet is to be transmitted according to a forwarding address, and the checking unit being further configured to provide the received ingress packet to the control plane processor when the identifying characteristic of the received ingress packet does not match the stored identifying characteristic, the control plane processor being configured to perform the network action comprising adding one or more differences to a header portion of the received ingress packet, the differences indicating at least the forwarding address; and a discovery unit configured to intercept an egress packet received from the control plane processor, the egress packet corresponding to the received ingress packet, to determine the one or more differences in selected portions of the header portion of the received ingress packet resulting from processing at the control plane processor, and to store in the memory a new network action based on the one or more differences.