Patent ID: 7944923

Claim:
A system comprising: a first virtual machine located on a first computer and associated with a first virtual network interface card (VNIC) on the first computer, a second virtual machine located on the first computer and associated the first VNIC and a second VNIC on the first computer, and a third virtual machine located on a second computer associated with a third VNIC on the second computer, wherein the first computer and the second computer are communicatively coupled with each other via a chassis interconnect, wherein the chassis interconnect is a Peripheral Component Interface Express (PCI-E) backplane; and a network express manager comprising: a a local receive ring for storing local traffic and a forwarding receive ring for storing forwarding traffic, and a hardware classifier configured to: register a local Internet Protocol (IP) address associated with a first VNIC and a Media Access Control (MAC) address associated with the first VNIC in a lookup table, receive a packet comprising the MAC address and a destination IP address, classify the packet as a type selected from a group consisting of local traffic and forwarding traffic using the lookup table, wherein the destination IP address matches the local IP address for local traffic and the destination IP address does not match the local IP address for forwarding traffic, and store the packet in one selected from a group consisting of the local receive ring and the forwarding receive ring based on the type, wherein the first VNIC is configured to: retrieve the packet from one selected from a group consisting of the local receive ring and the forwarding receive ring, send the packet to the first VM when the packet is retrieved from the local receive ring, and send the packet to the second VM when the packet is retrieved from the forwarding receive ring, wherein the network express manager is configured to: implement a virtual wire connecting the second VNIC to the third VNIC, wherein the network express manager implements the virtual wire using a virtual switching table and wherein the virtual switching table comprises a mapping of the second VNIC to a first PCI-E endpoint on the PCI-E backplane and a mapping of the third VNIC to a second PCI-E endpoint on the PCI-E backplane, and wherein the first computer is connected to the chassis interconnect at the first PCI-E endpoint and the second computer is connected to the chassis interconnect at the second PCI-E endpoint.