Network device level optimizations for latency sensitive RDMA traffic

A network device comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory including instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the network device to, at least:
• extract, by the network device in a communication path between a source host machine and a destination host machine, a tag from a packet received by the network device, the packet originating at a source executing on the source host machine and whose destination is the destination host machine, the tag set by the source and indicative of a first traffic class to be associated with the packet, the first traffic class being selected by the source from a plurality of traffic classes;
• determine, based on the tag, that the first traffic class corresponds to a latency sensitive traffic;
• and
• process the packet based on setting a first set of parameters associated with the network device and a second set of parameters corresponding to a network interface card associated with the source host machine, wherein the first set of parameters associated with the network device includes a first parameter corresponding to a type of explicit congestion notification marking associated with the latency sensitive traffic, wherein the type of explicit congestion notification marking corresponds to a deterministic and aggressive manner of marking packets that is achieved by assigning a first threshold parameter associated with a number of packets included in a queue of the network device a first value and assigning a second value to a second parameter corresponding to a probability of marking packets.

A non-transitory computer readable medium storing specific computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause a computer system to at least:

• extract, by a network device in a communication path between a source host machine and a destination host machine, a tag from a packet received by the network device, the packet originating at a source executing on the source host machine and whose destination is the destination host machine, the tag set by the source and indicative of a first traffic class to be associated with the packet, the first traffic class being selected by the source from a plurality of traffic classes;
• determine, based on the tag, that the first traffic class corresponds to a latency sensitive traffic;
• and
• process the packet based on setting a first set of parameters associated with the network device and a second set of parameters corresponding to a network interface card associated with the source host machine, wherein the first set of parameters associated with the network device includes a first parameter corresponding to a type of explicit congestion notification marking associated with the latency sensitive traffic, wherein the type of explicit congestion notification marking corresponds to a deterministic and aggressive manner of marking packets that is achieved by assigning a first threshold parameter associated with a number of packets included in a queue of the network device a first value and assigning a second value to a second parameter corresponding to a probability of marking packets.