Patent ID: 8635352

Claim:
A method for symmetric receive-side scaling (RSS) in a network device having an ingress side RRS router and an egress side RSS router and a plurality of queues for handling packets, the method comprising: identifying an internet protocol (IP) version being used for the network, wherein the IP versions is IPv4 or IPv6; identifying transport layer headers (TLHs) existence status, wherein the TLHs existence status is one of existent and nonexistent; generating a secret key by each of the egress side RSS router and the ingress side RSS router, the key being based on the identification of the IP version and the TLHs existence status, the secret key ensuring that packets sent from a source to a destination and packets sent from the destination to the source are routed by the egress side RSS router and the ingress side RSS router to a common queue among the plurality of queues, wherein the secret key is generated based on a seed, and wherein generation of the secret key further comprises: for a case of IPv4 and nonexistent status of the TLHs choosing the seed to be a random 32-bit number and repeating it four times thereby creating a 128-bit secret key; for a case of IPv4 and existent status of the TLHs choosing the seed to be a random 16-bit number and repeating it eight times thereby creating a 128-bit secret key; for a case of IPv6 and nonexistent status of the TLHs by choosing the seed to be a random 32-bit number and repeating it ten times thereby creating a 320-bit secret key; and, for a case of IPv6 and existent status of the TLHs choosing the seed to be a random 16-bit number and repeating it twenty times thereby creating a 320-bit secret key; and storing the secret key at a storage in the network device, the secret key being used by the ingress side RSS router and the egress side RSS router for routing packets.