In exemplary embodiments of the present invention, a router determines whether or not to establish a stateful routing session based on the suitability of one or more candidate return path interfaces. This determination is typically made at the time a first packet for a new session arrives at the router on a given ingress interface. In some cases, the router may be configured to require that the ingress interface be used for the return path of the session, in which case the router may evaluate whether the ingress interface is suitable for the return path and may drop the session if the ingress interface is deemed by the router to be unsuitable for the return path. In other cases, the router may be configured to not require that the ingress interface be used for the return path, in which case the router may evaluate whether at least one interface is suitable for the return path and drop the session if no interface is deemed by the router to be suitable for the return path.

Various embodiments are described that relate to a rapid deployment communications tile. As opposed to running various data and/or power wires, a construction crew can use set of tiles that have built in data and/or power transmission capabilities. These tiles can be keyed such that they interlock together to form a relatively uniform surface, such that the surface can also be used as a floor. Further, the tiles can have hardware components that enable the data and/or power transmission capabilities. These hardware components can be environmentally protected such that their performance is not subject to environmental factors.

A method and apparatus for performing a lookup in a switching device of a packet switched network where the lookup includes a plurality of distinct operations each of which returns a result that includes a pointer to a next operation in a sequence of operations for the lookup. The method includes determining a first lookup operation to be executed, executing the first lookup operation including returning a result and determining if the result includes a pointer to another lookup operation in the sequence of operations. If the result includes a pointer to another lookup operation, the lookup operation indicated by the result is executed. Else, the lookup is terminated.

Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to determining modification bounds that identify portions of a packet that are safe to modify so that modified portions of the packet may be flushed from a cache to a memory of a network interface card (NIC) of a host system when the entire packet is synchronized from the NIC. A modification bound of the filter may be determined, and a network packet may be received from the NIC. In response to determining that the network packet is to be modified, a portion of the network packet that is safe to modify may be identified based on the modification bound of the filter and modifications may be made thereto. The modified portion of the network packet may be synchronized to the NIC.

A method and apparatus of a device that broadcasts data to multiple hardware forwarding engines is described. In an exemplary embodiment, a central processing unit of the device receives the data to broadcast to the plurality of hardware forwarding engines. The device further writes the data to a broadcast log. In addition, the device transmits a signal to one or more co-processors that the data is available to be read, wherein each of the plurality of hardware forwarding corresponds to one of the one or more co-processors. Each of these co-processors reads the data in the broadcast log by receiving the signal that the data is ready to be read from the broadcast log. In addition, each co-processor determines a broadcast log entry for the data for that co-processor. Each co-processor further reads the data from the broadcast log entry via a direct memory access in memory that stores the broadcast log and the plurality of hardware forwarding engines use the data to process network traffic.

A router determines whether or not to establish a stateful routing session based on the suitability of one or more candidate return path interfaces. This determination is made when a first packet for a new session arrives at the router on a given ingress interface. For example, the router may be configured to require the ingress interface be used for the return path of the session, and the router may evaluate whether the ingress interface is suitable for the return path and may drop the session if the ingress interface is unsuitable for the return path. In other examples, the router may be configured to not require that the ingress interface be used for the return path, and the router may evaluate whether at least one interface is suitable for the return path and drop the session if no interface is suitable for the return path.