NETWORK DEVICE USING SOFTWARE FLOW TABLE AND NETWORK PROCESSING UNIT FOR PACKET FORWARDING AND RELATED PACKET FORWARDING METHOD
NETWORK DEVICE USING SOFTWARE FLOW TABLE AND NETWORK PROCESSING UNIT FOR PACKET FORWARDING AND RELATED PACKET FORWARDING METHOD
A network device includes a storage device, a hardware-accelerated forwarding circuit, and a network processing unit (NPU). The storage device stores a software flow table, where the software flow table includes a plurality of table entries. The hardware-accelerated forwarding circuit receives a first packet from a network, obtains a first hash value of the first packet, and determines that the first hash value encounters a hash collision in a hardware flow table. The NPU receives the first packet from the hardware-accelerated forwarding circuit, and deals with forwarding of the first packet according to forwarding information recorded in a table entry when the first packet hits the table entry of the software flow table.