Managing traffic on virtualized lanes between a network switch and a virtual machine

A computer readable medium comprising software instructions for managing resources on a host, wherein the software instructions comprise functionality to:

• receive, by a classifier located on a physical network interface card (NIC), a first plurality of packets addressed to a first destination address, wherein the first plurality of packets is associated with a first priority-based flow control (PFC) lane;
• forward, by the classifier, the first plurality of packets to a first hardware receive ring (HRR) mapped to a first virtual network interface card (VNIC), wherein the VNIC is executing on the host operatively connected to the physical NIC;
• transmit, by the physical NIC, a first pause frame associated with the first PFC lane to a switch operatively connected to the physical NIC,
• wherein the switch, in response to receiving the first pause frame, stores packets associated with the first PFC lane in a buffer without transmitting the packets to the physical NIC.

A system comprising:

• a physical network interface card (NIC) comprising a classifier and a plurality of hardware receive rings (HRRs), wherein the classifier is configured to forward packets associated with a first destination address to a first HRR and forward packets associated with a second destination address to a second HRR, wherein packets addressed to the first destination address are associated with a first priority-based flow control (PFC) lane;
• and
• a physical host, operatively connected to the physical NIC, comprising at least one virtual NIC (VNIC) configured to receive packets from the first HRR,
• wherein the at least one VNIC is further configured to transmit a pause frame associated with the first PFC lane to a switch operatively connected to the physical NIC
• wherein the switch, in response to receiving the pause frame, stores packets associated with the first PFC lane in a buffer without transmitting the packets to the physical NIC.