Methods and apparatus to allocate temporary protocol ports to control network load balancing

An apparatus to manage port assignments for network load balancing, the apparatus comprising:

• means for collecting bandwidth utilizations corresponding to physical links of network paths between a source and a destination, the network paths including at least one of a link aggregation group hop or an equal cost multi-path hop;
• means for determining network path costs corresponding to unused protocol ports of a physical server host based on the bandwidth utilizations;
• means for comparing the network path costs;
• and
• means for allocating one of the unused protocol ports to an application based on the comparison.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium comprising instructions that, when executed, cause at least one processor to:

• collect bandwidth utilizations corresponding to physical links of network paths between a source and a destination, the network paths including at least one of a link aggregation group hop or an equal cost multi-path hop;
• determine network path costs corresponding to unused protocol ports of a physical server host based on the bandwidth utilizations;
• compare the network path costs;
• and
• allocate one of the unused protocol ports to an application based on the comparison.