Patent ID: 8098676

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving, at a host system having receive queues, packets from a plurality of network interfaces, each of the network interfaces associated with at least one receive queue from the receive queues, wherein the plurality of network interfaces are capable to use any of the receive queues; providing availability of a plurality of processors for packet processing; and providing allocation of packet processing among the plurality of processors based on a table which associates one or more of the receive queues with a processor of the plurality of processors based on a hash value, wherein the hash value corresponding to the processor is to be determined based on connection-specific information in a header of each of the packets, wherein the processor queues are to store the packets from the receive queues, wherein the table is to associate hash values with the receive queues based on an unload analysis, wherein the unload analysis is to consider which processor from the plurality of processors is least busy based on: fullness of the one or more receive queues associated with the processor and processor utilization.