Patent ID: 9071529
Filing Date: 2015-06-30
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method performed by a network element acting as a forwarding plane within a software-defined network to reduce negative effects of slow-path packet processing, comprising: receiving, by the network element, a first packet; determining whether the first packet matches any flow entry within a set of one or more flow tables of the network element, wherein the set of flow tables comprise a set of one or more flow entries, each of the set of flow entries including a match criteria to be matched against a match portion of incoming packets and a set of one or more actions to be performed for packets having said match portions matching the match criteria of that flow entry; responsive to determining that the first packet does not match any flow entry within the set of flow tables, performing a miss procedure comprising: providing, to a controller, access to the first entry of the PMT upon the controller seeking said access.