A method of communication between an Ethernet Media Access Controller (MAC) and a physical interface (PHY) is disclosed. The method includes establishing communication between the MAC and the PHY via a first serial link in accordance with a Serializer Deserializer (SERDES) protocol. In a data transfer mode, data is transferred along the first serial link. Idle frames are transferred within an idle time gap along the link in an idle mode. The PHY is managed by encoding Management Data Input/Output (MDIO) information in one or more MDIO frames, and transferring the one or more MDIO frames within the idle time gap along the first serial link.

One embodiment of the present invention provides a switch in a network of interconnected switches. The switch includes a storage device, a hardware management apparatus, and a layer-2 management apparatus. The storage device stores a forwarding table, which includes an entry comprising a MAC address and an egress port for the MAC address. The hardware management apparatus determines whether a destination MAC address of a frame is present in a hardware table in memory of the switch. The layer-2 management apparatus, in response to a determination that the destination MAC address is not present in the hardware table, looks up a first entry comprising the destination MAC address in the forwarding table, and creates a second entry comprising the destination MAC address in the hardware table based on the first entry.

A network interface device for connection between a network and a data processing system, the network interface device comprising: a plurality of ports for receiving data packets directed to the data processing system. An interface services the ports in a predetermined order and writes the data packets to buffers of a common memory. Each buffer is part of one of a set of linked logical sequence of buffers forming virtual queues in the common memory. Each virtual queue is associated with a port. A memory manager selects buffers of the common memory so as to cause the interface to populate the plurality of virtual queues with data packets.

In one embodiment, a data packet message is provided which includes a routing header configured to accommodate both a deterministic source route and a probabilistic source route for encoding a nodal source route. The nodal source route is selectively encoded with one or both of a deterministic source route and a probabilistic source route based upon one or more predetermined criteria.

A switching system includes a port extender device coupled to a central switching device. Packets processed by the central switching device are forwarded to the port extender device and enqueued in ones of a plurality of egress queues in the port extender device for transmission of the packets via the front ports of the port extender device. Respective egress queues in the port extender device have a queue depth that is less than a queue depth of corresponding respective egress queues in the central switching device. A flow control message indicative of congestion in a particular egress queue of the port extender device is generated and transmitted to the central switch device to control transmission of packets from the central switching device to the particular egress queue of the port extender device.

A data packet extraction method and apparatus is disclosed. Two hash values calculated based on quintuple information of different data packets of a same session are the same, that is, two calculated remainders are also the same at a same sampling ratio. When one remainder of the two calculated remainders is a preset sampling remainder, all the data packets in a network that belong to the session are extracted, so as to implement data packet extraction based on a session. When the quintuple information of the different data packets of the same session matches a first mapping table, either all the data packets of the same session can match the first mapping table, or none of the data packets of the same session can match the first mapping table, so as to implement data packet extraction based on a session.

In one embodiment, a particular service chain data packet is received by a particular service node, with the service chain data packet including a header identifying service chain information. The particular service node applies a service to the particular service chain data packet. The particular service node adds service-layer operations data to the particular service chain data packet, with the service-layer operations data related to the current service function or the particular service node. Subsequently, the particular service node sends the particular service chain data packet with the service-layer operations data from the particular service node. In one embodiment, networking operations data is also added to the particular service chain data packet. In one embodiment, an egress service node removes the service-layer (and possibly networking) operations data and forwards to another system, possibly after processing this operations data.

A network switch, includes: a port configured to receive a packet from one of a first information processing device and a second information processing device: a processor configured to process the packet, wherein the processor performs operations of: extracting first information which is used for creating a request packet requesting a response of a first virtual machine executed by the first information processing device from the packet which is transmitted by the first virtual machine to a second virtual machine executed by the second information processing device; creating the request packet using the first information; transmitting the request packet to the first virtual machine; and determining an operation state of the first virtual machine based on if a response packet for the request packet is received from the first virtual machine.

Apparatuses, methods and storage medium associated with buffering data in a switch are provided. In embodiments, the switch may include a plurality of queue buffers, a plurality of queues respectively associated with the plurality of queue buffers, a shared buffer, and a queue point controller coupled with the plurality of queue buffers and the shared buffer. In embodiments the queue point controller may be configured to determine an amount of available space in a selected queue buffer of the plurality of queue buffers. The queue point controller may be further configured to allocate at least a portion of the shared buffer to a selected queue that is associated with the selected queue buffer. In embodiments, this allocation may be based on the amount of available space determined in the selected queue buffer. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.

Examples disclosed herein relate to controlling an unknown flow inflow to an SDN controller in a software defined network (SDN). In an example, an optimizer may be provided, between a switch and an SDN controller, to intercept an unknown flow from the switch to the SDN controller, in a software defined network. A portion of a data packet from each data packet in a plurality of data packets from the unknown flow may be aggregated at the optimizer. Only the aggregated portion of the data packet from each data packet may be sent, from the optimizer to the SDN controller, in a single package.