Abstract: Mechanisms are provided for configuring a data flow between a source device and a destination device in a network. The mechanisms receive, from a network control application, a request to establish a network configuration corresponding to a data flow between the source device and the destination device. The request comprises a fine grained header field tuple for defining the data flow. The mechanisms allocate, from a shadow address pool, a shadow address to be mapped to the fine grained header field tuple. The shadow address pool comprises addresses not being used by devices coupled to the network. The mechanisms configure a network infrastructure of the network to route data packets of the data flow from the source device to the destination device based on the shadow address.

Abstract: Mechanisms are provided for configuring a data flow between a source device and a destination device in a network. The mechanisms receive, from a network control application, a request to establish a network configuration corresponding to a data flow between the source device and the destination device. The request comprises a fine grained header field tuple for defining the data flow. The mechanisms allocate, from a shadow address pool, a shadow address to be mapped to the fine grained header field tuple. The shadow address pool comprises addresses not being used by devices coupled to the network. The mechanisms configure a network infrastructure of the network to route data packets of the data flow from the source device to the destination device based on the shadow address.

Abstract: A mechanism is provided for implementing a per-address spanning tree (PAST) to direct the forwarding of packets in a set of switches. The per-address spanning tree is computed for each identified address in a set of addresses thereby forming a set of per-address spanning trees. A set of forwarding rules associated with each per-address spanning tree in the set of per-address spanning trees is generated and installed all appropriate switches in the set of switches for which the per-address spanning tree is generated so that each switch in the set of switches will forward packets based on the set of forwarding rules installed in that switch.