System and method to identify imbalance and enable mid-flow rebalancing

A method of redirecting packets with stateful flow awareness among a plurality of processing cores, comprising:

• distributing new incoming flows of network traffic to one of the plurality of processing cores;
• measuring a utilization score of each of the plurality of processing cores;
• identifying, based on an imbalance among the plurality of processing cores, an overloaded processing core to rebalance as a processing core of the plurality of processing cores with the utilization score greater than a first threshold and a deviation from an average utilization score of the plurality of processing cores that is greater than a second threshold;
• identifying a subject flow to move from the overloaded processing core;
• identifying a target processing core with a lowest utilization;
• and
• migrating processing of the subject flow from the overloaded processing core to the target processing core.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer-executable instructions, that when executed by a processor including a plurality of processing cores, cause the processor to:

• distribute new incoming flows of network traffic to one of the plurality of processing cores;
• measure a utilization score of each of the plurality of processing cores;
• identify, based on an imbalance among the plurality of processing cores, an overloaded processing core to rebalance, the overloaded processing core having a utilization score greater than a first threshold and a deviation from an average utilization score of the plurality of processing cores that is greater than a second threshold;
• identify a subject flow to move from the overloaded processing core;
• identify a target processing core with a lowest utilization;
• and
• migrate processing of the subject flow from the overloaded processing core to the target processing core.