Cisco Technology, Inc.

Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Murty Kotha

Mario Baldi

Vishwas Danivas

Kit Chiu Chu

The packet processing chip of a networking device includes a packet processing pipeline circuit and a programmable policer circuit. A single programmable policer circuit may use policing policy identifiers and an aggregated token bucket to police multiple network flows. A policing policy identifier may govern which policing policy is used for a network packet. Each network flow may have a flow table entry that includes a policing policy identifier and a programmable policer circuit identifier. After reading the flow table entry for processing a network packet, the packet processing pipeline circuit may send data including the policing policy identifier to the programmable policer circuit which returns a policing decision in accordance with the policing policy and the state of the aggregated token bucket. Different network flows may use the same aggregated token buck and different policing policies to thereby implement strict priority of some network flows over others.

Systems and methods for using programmable policer circuits for network flow policing

In one example, a collection network node comprising a plurality of ingress ports obtains, at a first one of the plurality of ingress ports, a first copy of a packet of a packet flow comprising a plurality of packets. The collection network node determines whether the collection network node had previously obtained a copy of any of the plurality of packets of the packet flow. When it is determined that the collection network node had previously obtained a copy, the collection network node determines whether the collection network node had previously obtained a copy at the first one of the plurality of ingress ports or at a different one of the plurality of ingress ports. When it is determined that the collection network node had previously obtained a copy at a different one of the plurality of ingress ports, the collection network node refrains from forwarding the first copy.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Murty Kotha