US Patent 9294302 Non-fragmented IP packet tunneling in a network

A method and apparatus is disclosed herein for IP packet tunneling in a network. In one embodiment, the method comprises receiving, at a first network device, a first IP packet of a IP connection; creating a second IP packet by replacing information in a field in the first IP packet with a session ID identifying the IP connection; and forwarding, by the first network device, the second IP packet to the second network device in the distributed network environment.