Cisco Technology, Inc.

Rengabashyam Srinivas

Jan Medved

Prabhakara Rao Yellai

Jian Jin

William Norman Eatherton

Ganesh Sadasivan

Xiaoxue Ma

Peram Marimuthu

A software reload is executed. The hardware associated with the network device continues to forward network traffic during the software reload. Also, a kernel of the network device operates unaffected in a protected address space throughout the software reload. Further, the kernel preserves local checkpointed and shared memory data. Application processes running on the network node are shut down gracefully. The reloaded software is brought up and the network device is resynchronized.

Performing an in-service software reload on a network device

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for defining flow types and instances thereof such as for identifying packets corresponding to instances of the flow types. A flow type is defined and includes a set of properties including at least one of the possible properties selectable when defining a flow type. An instance of the flow type is defined and a set of corresponding associative memory entries is generated. A lookup word generator of a packet processing engine is typically notified of the use of the flow type, and one or more lookup words are generated typically by extracting fields from a received packet and/or from other sources. Based on a result of lookup operations on the set of associative memories entries using the generated one or more lookup words, the received packet can be identified as whether it matches or does not match the instance of the flow type.

Methods and apparatus for defining flow types and instances thereof such as for identifying packets corresponding to instances of the flow types

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Rengabashyam Srinivas