| CPC H04L 45/742 (2013.01) [H04L 45/22 (2013.01); H04L 45/566 (2013.01)] | 20 Claims | 

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               1. A method for data transmission over a network; 
            comprising: 
                generating, by a sending device, a data packet for transmission, wherein a header of the data packet includes a routing hint field indicating a status of the data packet, and wherein the status is selected from a status list comprising: 
                a normal packet, 
                  a first packet in a heavy flow, wherein the heavy flow is a data flow having more than a predefined number of packets transmitted during a predefined period of time, and 
                a last packet in the heavy flow; 
                transmitting, by the sending device, the data packet to a destination address over the network, including re-routing the data packet using a network multiplexer; 
                wherein based on the data packet being the normal packet, a routing cache is checked to determine whether there is a routing entry for a flow corresponding to the data packet; 
                based on the data packet being the first packet in the heavy flow, it is determined whether to transmit the data packet based on the default path in an equal cost multiple paths (ECMP) table or based on an alternative path in the ECMP table; and 
                based on the data packet being the last packet in the heavy flow, a corresponding entry for the heavy flow in the routing cache is deleted. 
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