Patent ID: 7944828

Claim:
A network controller interface, comprising: at least one interface to a media access controller to receive ingress packets from a network connection, respective received ingress packets belonging to respective Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol flows identified by, at least, Transmission Control Protocol ports and Internet Protocol addresses of the respective packets; at least one interface to multiple respective processors; circuitry to: direct the received ingress packets to the multiple respective processors such that each of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol flows maps to a single one of the multiple respective processors, wherein different flows map to different ones of the multiple respective processors, wherein the network interface controller directs the received ingress packets by accessing lookup data associating a respective flow with a respective one of the multiple respective processors; and receive an egress packet at the network interface controller from a transmitting one of the respective multiple processors for transmission via the network connection and, in response, store data in the lookup data associating the transmitting one of the respective multiple processors with a flow of the egress packet such that subsequently received ingress packets belonging to the flow are directed to the transmitting one of the respective multiple processors; wherein the circuitry comprises circuitry to hash at least the following data fields: the Internet Protocol source and destination addresses and the Transmission Control Protocol source and destination ports of the respective received ingress packets to yield a flow hash result; and wherein the lookup data associates flow hash results with respective ones of the multiple processors.