Patent ID: 7995465

Claim:
A method for intelligently transferring a network connection to a network interface card (NIC) residing within a computing device for receiving network traffic, the method comprising: maintaining NIC utilization and NIC error rate data for all NICs in the computing device; determining, that the network connection should be transferred from a first NIC residing within the computing device to a second NIC residing within the computing device; invalidating, a first entry in a hash table that includes a first media access control (MAC) address corresponding to the first NIC, wherein an operating system controlling the computing device initially selected the first NIC to receive network traffic related to the network connection; intercepting an address resolution protocol (ARP) response packet generated by the operating system, wherein the ARP response packet includes the first MAC address; decoding the ARP response packet to determine a hash table index corresponding to the first entry in the hash table by providing to a hash function one or more network parameters included in the decoded ARP response packet; determining that the first entry in the hash table is not valid; selecting a second MAC address corresponding to the second NIC residing within the computing device based on a weighted combination of the NIC utilization and NIC error rate data for all NICs in the computing device; and replacing the first MAC address in the ARP response packet with the second MAC address.