According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, there is provided a method for providing a virtual private network service in ICN name-based networking. The method comprising: receiving an interest packet; checking whether or not the interest packet includes a forwarding hint; checking, when the interest packet includes the forwarding hint, whether or not the forwarding hint includes a specific keyword; generating, when the forwarding hint includes the specific keyword, a VRF ID by extracting a VRF name from a name of the interest packet; selecting an FIB by using the generated VRF ID; executing a lookup for the FIB by using an interest name extracted from the interest packet; determining an output port by using the lookup; and transmitting the interest packet to the output port.

A system, process, and computer-readable medium for updating an application cache using a stream listening service is described. A stream listening service may monitor one or more data streams for content relating to a user. The stream listening service may forward the content along with time-to-live values to an application cache. A user may use an application to obtain information regarding the user's account, where the application obtains information from a data store and/or cached information from the application cache. The stream listening service, by forwarding current account information, obtained from listening to one or more streams, to the application cache, reduces traffic at the data store by providing current information from the data stream to the application cache.

A network element includes multiple ports and a packet classifier. The packet classifier is configured to receive rules and Rule Patterns (RPs), each RP corresponding to a subset of the rules and specifies positions of unmasked packet-header bits to be matched by the rules in the subset, to store in a RAM a grouping of the RPs into Extended RPs (ERPs), each ERP defining a superset of the unmasked bits in the RPs associated therewith, to receive packets and match each packet to one or more of the rules by accessing the ERPs in the RAM, to determine counter values, each counter value corresponding to a respective RP and is indicative of a number of the received packets that match the RP, and to adaptively modify grouping of the RPs into the ERPs depending on the counter values.

After receiving a packet, a programmable forwarding device determines whether a flow entry matching the packet exists in a local flow table of the programmable forwarding device. If the flow entry does not exist, the programmable forwarding device sends the packet to a computing device. After receiving the packet, a programmable network adapter in the computing device determines whether a flow entry matching the packet exists in a local flow table of the programmable network adapter. If the flow entry does not exist, the programmable network adapter sends the packet to a processor in the computing device, so that a gateway running on the processor processes the packet.

A communication control apparatus that implements at least some functions in flow control of a software defined network (SDN) by hardware, the communication control apparatus includes a processor. The configured to set, when a packet of a flow that is not registered in transfer control information is detected when a plurality of packets that constitutes a flow is transferred, a destination resolution standby state for the flow in the transfer control information, store, into an evaluation queue, at least some of packets received in the destination resolution standby state, stop a pipeline that processes a packet to be transferred after destination resolution for the flow, output a packet that belongs to the flow and is stored in the evacuation queue, and operate the pipeline after the output of the packet stored in the evacuation queue is completed.

A method is implemented by a network device where the method performs a trace flow process in a packet processing pipeline of the network device. The packet processing pipeline includes a trace table and a forward table. The method encompasses forwarding a trace packet to the trace table, forwarding a copy of the trace packet to a trace analyzer in response to determining that a trace bit is set in the trace packet, forwarding the trace packet to the forward table, and determining a next stage of the packet processing pipeline based on trace packet meta data and a value stored in a trace register.

A method for content caching in information centric network virtualization includes receiving, by a first node, a first data packet; in response to a cache distance identifier hop of the first data packet being less than a preset maximum cache distance, setting hop=hop+1 and sending the first data packet to a next node by the first node; in response to the hop being not less than the preset maximum cache distance and there being available cache space in the first node, setting hop=0, storing the first data packet, and sending the first data packet to the next node by the first node. The node determines whether to cache a data packet based on the cache distance identifier of the data packet, which comprehensively considers the cache energy consumption caused by caching the data packet in the node and the transmission energy consumption caused by transmission of the data packet in the link, thereby effectively reducing the total energy consumption of the network.

This disclosure describes techniques for implementing centralized path computation for routing in hybrid information-centric networking protocols implemented as a virtual network overlay. A method includes receiving an interest packet header from a forwarding router node of a network overlay. The method further includes determining an interest path of the interest packet and one or more destination router nodes of the network overlay. The method further includes computing one or more paths over the network overlay. The method further includes determining an addressing method for the one or more computed paths over the network overlay. The method further includes performing at least one of encoding each computed path in a data packet header, and encoding each computed path as state entries of each router node of the network overlay on each respective path. The method further includes returning the computed path information to the forwarding router node.

A Forwarding Information Base (FIB) caching system and scheme that selects and generates a minimal number of non-overlapping prefixes for the FIB cache to improve computer-based network communications and operations efficiency, accuracy and speed. Because the cached prefixes do not cover any longer prefixes in the full FIB, the present invention thus avoids cache-hiding issues. The system further comprises a FIB caching updating component that systematically handles cache misses, cache replacement, and routing updates.

Some examples relate to distributing application classification entries to network devices. An example includes receiving, by a processing resource in a cloud computing system, an application classification entry for an application from respective network devices on a network. The application classification entry may comprise a given application identifier for identifying the application and control information for routing a network packet originating from the application. For the given application identifier, the processing resource may generate a consolidated set of application classification entries, based on the application classification entry received from respective network devices. The processing resource may then determine appropriate network devices to distribute the consolidated set of application classification entries.