Network packet steering

A network packet steering system, comprising:

• one or more processing resources;
• one or more network interfaces;
• and
• wherein the one or more processing resources are configurable, uniquely identified, and assigned to a number of the network interfaces or to a number of line interface ports associated with one of the network interfaces, and wherein the one or more network interfaces steer an incoming network packet to one of the processing resources using the configured assignment.

A network interface steering table data structure residing on a computer readable medium, comprising:

• a plurality of interface identifiers;
• a plurality of sub-interface identifiers associated with each interface identifier;
• and
• wherein when a packet is received by a network interface, the packet is indexed into the data structure based on the interface identifier of the network interface receiving the packet and the sub-interface identifier associated with the line interface port of the network interface providing the packet, and the indexed data structure provides an address to a processing resource where the packet is to be steered and a pointer to a specific process within the processing resource that is used to process the packet.