Patent ID: 8195832

Claim:
A method for facilitating management of a hardware address table storage space, comprising: at least one data processing device accessing, from memory coupled to said at least one data processing device, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to perform an operation receiving a packet having information thereof configurable as an entry within a hardware address table storage space, wherein said information thereof includes information designating a priority of a respective source network address; said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to perform an operation for determining that a number of entries within the hardware address table storage space is equal to a capacity of the hardware address table storage space, wherein each one of said entries within the hardware address table storage space includes respective information designating a priority of a respective source network address; said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to perform an operation for adjusting a priority level of said received packet to be different than an as-received priority level of the packet thereby creating adjusted priority designating information for said received packet, wherein adjusting the priority level is performed at least partially dependent upon rules designating a condition under which the priority level of said received packet is to be adjusted with respect to priority levels of said entries within the hardware address table storage space and said adjusting includes an option of both increasing and decreasing said priority level; said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to perform an operation for comparing said adjusted priority designating information of said received packet with said priority designating information of at least a portion of said entries within the hardware address table storage space in response to determining that a number of entries within the hardware address table storage space is equal to a capacity of the hardware address table storage space; and said at least one data processing device accessing, from said memory, instructions causing said at least one data processing device to perform an operation for replacing an entry within the hardware address table storage space with an entry having contents corresponding to said received packet in response to determining that the priority level corresponding to said adjusted priority designating information of said received packet is higher than a priority level corresponding to said priority designating information of said replaced entry.