A router configured to implement Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) includes circuitry configured receive BGP update messages from the one or more BGP peers, monitor one or more operational criteria associated with handling of the received BGP update messages, detect a trigger event indicative of a risk that continued reception of BGP update messages at a current rate could exceed a capacity of the router, and, in response to detecting the trigger event, transmit a BGP notification message to at least one of the BGP peers, the BGP notification message instructing the BGP peer to lock its BGP session with the router so that no prefixes are sent, thereby providing an automatic session lockout mechanism that prevents network fallout without terminating the BGP neighborship or causing route withdrawals.

A router configured to implement Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) includes circuitry configured receive BGP update messages from the one or more BGP peers, monitor one or more operational criteria associated with handling of the received BGP update messages, detect a trigger event indicative of a risk that continued reception of BGP update messages at a current rate could exceed a capacity of the router, and, in response to detecting the trigger event, transmit a BGP notification message to at least one of the BGP peers, the BGP notification message instructing the BGP peer to lock its BGP session with the router so that no prefixes are sent, thereby providing an automatic session lockout mechanism that prevents network fallout without terminating the BGP neighborship or causing route withdrawals.

A credit-based data flow control method between a consumer device and a producer device. The method includes the steps of decrementing a credit counter for each transmission of a sequence of data by the producer device, arresting data transmission when the credit counter reaches zero, sending a credit each time the consumer device has consumed a data sequence and incrementing the credit counter upon receipt of each credit.

A switch device for a network element includes a transfer system (110) for transferring data from ingress line interfaces of the network element to egress line interfaces of the network element in accordance with control information associated with the data. The transfer system includes a control section (111) configured to compare data traffic load to capacity available to the data traffic load at one of the egress line interfaces so as to generate a congestion indicator expressing whether a data flow (113) representing the data traffic load is a potential cause of congestion at the one of the egress line interfaces. The control section is further configured to direct a congestion control action to the data flow if the data flow is a potential cause of congestion. Thus, the congestion management related to the ingress and egress line interfaces can be carried out by the switch device.

Discussed herein is a framework that provisions for customized processing for different classes of traffic. A network device in a communication path between a source host machine and a destination host machine extracts a tag from a packet received by the network device. The packet originates at a source executing on the source host machine and whose destination is the destination host machine. The tag set by the source and indicative of a first traffic class to be associated with the packet, the first traffic class being selected by the source from a plurality of traffic classes. The network device determines, based on the tag, that the first traffic class corresponds to a latency sensitive traffic and processes the packet using one or more settings configured at the network device for processing packets associated with the first traffic class.

Roughly described: a network interface device has an interface. The interface is coupled to first network interface device circuitry, host interface circuitry and host offload circuitry. The host interface circuitry is configured to interface to a host device and has a scheduler configured to schedule providing and/or receiving of data to/from the host device. The interface is configured to allow at least one of: data to be provided to said host interface circuitry from at least one of said first network device interface circuitry and said host offload circuitry; and data to be provided from said host interface circuitry to at least one of said first network interface device circuitry and said host offload circuitry.

Roughly described: a network interface device has an interface. The interface is coupled to first network interface device circuitry, host interface circuitry and host offload circuitry. The host interface circuitry is configured to interface to a host device and has a scheduler configured to schedule providing and/or receiving of data to/from the host device. The interface is configured to allow at least one of: data to be provided to said host interface circuitry from at least one of said first network device interface circuitry and said host offload circuitry; and data to be provided from said host interface circuitry to at least one of said first network interface device circuitry and said host offload circuitry.