Patent ID: 8014317

Claim:
A method of forwarding data in a network, the method comprising: receiving a data unit; retrieving information identifying a plurality of next hops associated with the data unit based on a chained representation of the plurality of next hops in a forwarding table, where information, from the retrieved information, that identifies each of the plurality of next hops, defines an action of a plurality of actions that is performed for the data unit; rewriting a header of the data unit to include the retrieved information identifying the plurality of next hops and to form a rewritten data unit; performing, for the data unit and based on the retrieved information identifying the plurality of next hops, the plurality of actions that include one or more of class-of-service (CoS) updates, functions associated with gathering statistics, or network address translation (NAT) updates; and forwarding the rewritten data unit towards a plurality of destinations in the network based on the retrieved information identifying the plurality of next hops.