Offloading heartbeat responses message processing to a kernel of a network device

A network device comprising:

• one or more programmable processors coupled to memory having instructions stored thereon, the instructions including instructions that, when executed by the one or more programmable processors, cause the one or more programmable processors to:
• process, in kernel space, heartbeat response messages received from one or more network devices of a plurality of network devices, wherein processing includes determining, for each of the plurality of heartbeat response messages, an index value based at least in part on information in the respective heartbeat response message identifying the network device that sent the respective heartbeat response message, wherein determining includes checking if the index value is present in a look up table of index values;
• update the health check data structure at the heartbeat response message fields indicated by the generated index values to indicate that heartbeat response messages were received from the network devices;
• and
• process, in a user space of the first network device, information received from at least one of the heartbeat response message fields of the health check data structure to obtain health status associated with one or more of the plurality of network devices.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium encoded with instructions that, when executed, cause at least one processor of a networking device to:

• process, in kernel space, heartbeat response messages received from one or more network devices of a plurality of network devices, wherein processing includes:
• determining, for each of the plurality of heartbeat response messages, an index value based at least in part on information in the respective heartbeat response message identifying the network device that sent the respective heartbeat response message, wherein determining includes checking if the index value is present in a look up table of index values;
• update the health check data structure at the heartbeat response message fields indicated by the generated index values to indicate that heartbeat response messages were received from the network devices;
• and
• process, in a user space of the first network device, information received from at least one of the heartbeat response message fields of the health check data structure to obtain health status associated with one or more of the plurality of network devices.