Method and apparatus for prioritizing source MAC address miss processing

A network element to prioritize source Media Access Control (MAC) address miss processing, comprising:

• a plurality of line cards each to include,
• one or more ports to receive frames,
• one or more frame processing modules coupled with the one or more ports, the frame processing modules to determine source MAC address misses and classify each one of those determined source MAC address misses based on a type of source MAC miss including source MAC address move and unknown source MAC address;
• and
• a control card coupled with the plurality of line cards, the control card including,
• a processor to process the source MAC address misses, wherein the processor is to process the source MAC address misses classified as source MAC address moves prior to processing the source MAC address misses classified as unknown source MAC addresses.

A non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, if executed by a processor, will cause said processor to perform operations for prioritizing source Media Access Control (MAC) address miss processing in a network element, comprising:

• receiving a plurality of frames at a plurality of ports of the network element, each frame including a source MAC address;
• for each one of the plurality of frames, determining whether the source MAC address of that frame is associated with the port that frame was received on, wherein at least a set of two or more of the plurality of frames are determined to each include a source MAC address that is not associated with the port its frame was received on respectively;
• for each of the set of two or more of the plurality of frames, determining whether the source MAC address of that frame is associated with a different one of the plurality of ports of the network element than the port in which that frame was received;
• for each of those of the set of two or more of the plurality of frames whose source MAC address is associated with a different one of the plurality of ports of the network element than the port in which that frame was received, placing a source MAC miss message in a high priority MAC move miss queue;
• for each of those of the set of two or more of the plurality of frames whose source MAC address is not associated with any of the plurality of ports of the network element, placing a source MAC miss message in a low priority unknown MAC miss queue;
• and
• internally processing those source MAC miss messages in the high priority MAC move miss queue with a higher priority than processing those source MAC miss messages in the low priority unknown MAC miss queue, wherein processing each source MAC miss message includes updating one or more forwarding structures of the network element to reflect an association between the port the corresponding frame was received on and the source MAC address.