Patent ID: 8174984

Claim:
A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising software instructions for managing resources on a host, wherein the software instructions comprise functionality to: configure a classifier located on a physical network interface card (NIC), to forward packets addressed to a first destination address to a first hardware receive ring (HRR) mapped to a first virtual network interface card (VNIC), wherein the first VNIC is executing on the host operatively connected to the physical NIC, wherein packets addressed to the first destination address are associated with a priority-based flow control (PFC) lane; configure the classifier to forward packets addressed to a second destination address to a second HRR, wherein packets addressed to the second destination address are associated with a second PFC lane; and transmit, by the first VNIC in response to a violation of a usage policy, a pause frame associated with the PFC lane to a switch operatively connected to the physical NIC, wherein the switch, in response to receiving the pause frame, stores packets associated with the PFC lane in a buffer without transmitting the packets to the physical NIC, wherein the first VNIC is associated with a distinct internet protocol (IP) address, and wherein the first VNIC is located in a media access control (MAC) layer of the host, and wherein the usage policy is violated when at least one selected from a group consisting of (a) the number of interrupts issued by the first HRR exceeds a predetermined threshold, (b) the number of packets dropped by the first HRR exceeds a predetermined threshold, (c) when the number of bytes received by the first HRR exceeds a predetermined threshold occurs.