US Patent 9825865 Statistical operations associated with network traffic forwarding

In one embodiment, an indication of a plurality of network nodes and load balancing criteria is received. A plurality of forwarding entries are created, wherein a forwarding entry of the plurality of forwarding entries is based upon the load balancing criteria and corresponds to a network node of the plurality of network nodes. A network element applies the plurality of forwarding entries to data packets to load balance the data packets among the plurality of network nodes. A plurality of counts are tracked, wherein each count corresponds to at least one forwarding entry of the plurality of forwarding entries and represents the number of times the corresponding at least one forwarding entry is used to redirect a data packet.