Patent ID: 8837322

Claim:
A method to handle information packets comprising: receiving an incoming packet at a data plane at a network data handling apparatus; extracting packet data from the incoming packet; matching a plurality of flows from a flow data store with the extracted packet data; marking a packet descriptor data associated with the incoming packet, the marking forming a marked ingress packet, wherein the marking is performed in response to the matching failing to find a matching flow; forwarding the marked ingress packet to a control plane at the network data handling apparatus; retrieving a flow-related data related to the marked ingress packet at the control plane; updating, by the control plane, the packet descriptor data included in the marked ingress packet using the flow-related data, the updating forming an updated marked packet; and sending the updated marked packet back to the data plane, wherein the data plane processes the updated marked packet utilizing the flow-related data from the updated marked packet.