Various exemplary embodiments relate to a method for processing data packets by a first-hop switch in a data network, including: receiving a first data packet associated with a flow; determining whether the flow associated with the first data packet is found in a flow table in the first-hop switch; modifying the first data packet by replacing a packet header field with flow definition information; and transmitting the modified first data packet based upon the flow definition information.

A communication system includes: a control apparatus configured to set control information, which causes each control target switch to distinguish a link layer discovery protocol packet of a first network from a link layer discovery protocol packet of a second network different from the first network and to perform corresponding predetermined processing, in each control target switch; a group of switches each of which is configured to transmit a link layer discovery protocol packet of the first network to a predetermined topology management apparatus in accordance with control information set by the control apparatus; and a topology management apparatus configured to manage a network topology configured by the group of switches on the basis of information included in a link layer discovery protocol packet of the first network received from each of the switches.

In a distributed control system including a central communication device, terminal communication devices to which target devices to be controlled are connected, and a network including multiple communication paths connecting the central communication device and terminal communication devices, each terminal communication device includes a calculation input/output performance storage unit storing input/output performance of a calculation unit for controlling the target devices to be controlled and a control input/output performance storage unit storing the performance of the input/output control units of the target devices to be controlled, and the central communication device collects input/output performance information previously stored in these storage units, determines communication paths of the terminal communication units and a packet division method in such a manner that an amount of a communication data of a network and response performance requested of the distributed control system are satisfied, on the basis of the collected input/output performance information and sets the determination results in the terminal communication devices.

The embodiments disclose a method and apparatus of selecting a path for transmission from paths between a first LER and a second LER in the MPLS network. The method may comprise: obtaining state information of the paths between the first LER and the second LER, the state information may indicate that a path is in up state or down state; obtaining stability information of at least one of the paths between the first LER and the second LER, the stability information may indicate that a path is stable or unstable; and selecting a path for transmission based on the state information and the stability information.

A method for controlling a data flow in a domain of an OpenFlow protocol controlled software-defined network (SDN) comprising receiving a request from a network element for instructions to route the data flow through the OpenFlow SDN, determining a route for the data flow through the OpenFlow SDN, transmitting a unified header to the network element in the OpenFlow SDN, wherein the unified header facilitates transmission of data flows through the OpenFlow SDN that are encoded according to a plurality of network abstraction types, and transmitting instructions for forwarding the data flow along the route through the OpenFlow SDN, wherein the instructions for forwarding the data flow along the route through the OpenFlow SDN comprise one or more match fields, one or more mask values corresponding to the match fields, and one or more actions for the network element in the OpenFlow SDN to perform on the data flow.

A computer-implemented method includes sending a first request message to a first server associated with a first access network indicative of a request for an indication of whether the first server is configured to support prioritization of tunneled traffic, receiving a first response message from the first server indicative of whether the first server is configured to support prioritization of tunneled traffic, establishing one or more first tunnels with a security service when the first response message is indicative that the first server is configured to support prioritization of tunneled traffic, sending first flow characteristics and a first tunnel identifier to the first server; and receiving the first flow characteristics for each first tunnel from the first server at a first network controller. The first network controller is configured to apply a quality of service policy within the first access network for each tunnel in accordance with the flow characteristics.

Provided is a distributed service function (SF) forwarding system that applies the corresponding service function chain (SFC) to traffic classified by a plurality of service network (SN) controller instances based on an SN overlay structure. Therefore, by selectively combining and executing necessary network functions (SFs) according to a path and traffic made up of defined component services, it is possible to dynamically configure and control one network service.

In one embodiment, a system comprises a network interface controller to determine context information associated with a data packet. The network interface controller may select a receive descriptor profile from a plurality of receive descriptor profiles based upon a first portion of the context information and build a receive descriptor for the data packet based upon a second portion of the context information and the selected receive descriptor profile.

Some demonstrative embodiments include apparatuses, systems and/or methods of establishing a mesh data path. For example, a first Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN) device may be configured to transmit a NAN data path request to a second NAN device to request to establish a NAN data path between the first NAN device and the second NAN device, the NAN data path request including a first path information attribute corresponding to a mesh data path; and to process a NAN data path response from the second NAN device, the NAN data path response including a second path information attribute corresponding to the mesh data path, the second path information attribute including a path status indicator to indicate whether mesh data path routing to the destination address of the mesh data path is successful.

A network flow management system includes controllers that are each coupled to a subset of switch devices, and a flow management server system that is coupled to each of the controllers. The flow management server system collects first-level flow information for the switch devices from the controllers, and filters and structures the first-level flow information to generate second-level flow information. The flow management server system then analyzes the second-level flow information based on current flow operation policies that are configured to cause the switch devices to perform first flow operations and, in response, determines flow operation policy changes. The flow management server system then distributes updated flow operation policies that includes the flow operation policy changes to each of the controllers, where the updated flow operation policies cause the switch devices to perform second flow operation that are different than the first flow operations.