Patent ID: 7792018

Claim:
A method for intelligently transferring a network connection to a network interface card (NIC) for transmitting network traffic, the method comprising: configuring a processor to perform an operation, comprising: intercepting a transmit packet generated by an operating system, wherein the transmit packet includes a first media access control (MAC) address associated with a first NIC in a plurality of NICs that has been selected by the operating system to transmit network traffic related to the network connection; decoding the transmit packet; generating a hash table index associated with a hash table entry based on a hash function and on one more network parameters included in the decoded transmit packet; reading the hash table entry based on the hash table index; determining if the hash table entry is valid; when the hash table entry is valid, generating a second MAC address associated with a second NIC in the plurality of NICs based on the hash table entry, or when the hash table entry is invalid, generating the second MAC address associated with the second NIC based on a weighted combination of NIC utilization data and NIC error rate data associated with the plurality of NICs; and replacing the first MAC address in the transmit packet with the second MAC address.