System and method for maintaining captive portal user authentication

A network device having a symmetric multiprocessing architecture, the network device comprising:

• a plurality of CPU cores;
• a network interface to receive one or more data packets;
• and
• a memory whose access is shared by the dedicated CPU core and the plurality of CPU cores;
• wherein the plurality of CPU cores are to:
• determine an association status between a client and an access point in a wireless network;
• determine whether to remove an entry corresponding to the client from a network layer (L3) cache based on the association status;
• and
• remove the entry corresponding to the client from the network layer (L3) cache in response to determining that the entry is to be removed.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing embedded instructions for a plurality of operations that are executed by one or more mechanisms implemented within a network device having a symmetric multiprocessing architecture, the plurality of operations comprising:

• determining an association status between a client and an access point in a wireless network;
• determining whether to remove an entry corresponding to the client from a network layer (L3) cache based on the association status;
• and
• removing the entry corresponding to the client from the network layer (L3) cache in response to determining that the entry is to be removed.