US Patent 11088988 Virtual-machine dataplane with DHCP-server functionality

In order to provide efficient processing of Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) data flows and dynamic Internet Protocol (IP) address management, an electronic device that implements a virtual dataplane in a network may separate the DHCP data flows from other data flows. Then, the virtual dataplane may perform IP address management using one or more applications that are executed by a processor in the electronic device. In order to accelerate processing of a sequence of packets in a DHCP data flow to a destination, the virtual dataplane may look up a stored result of a look-up operation for a first packet in the sequence, so that subsequent packets in the sequence use the stored result without performing the look-up operation. Furthermore, the IP address management may include dynamically freeing up IP addresses in the network based on network activity of client devices.