US Patent 11374859 Flow table programming using flow miss metadata and burst action assist via CPU offload

A network appliance can queue a first packet and a second packet of a network traffic flow in an input queue of a match-action pipeline. The match-action pipeline can be implemented via a packet processing circuit of the network appliance and can be configured to process a plurality of network traffic flows. Submitting the first packet to the match-action pipeline can cause a first flow miss. The second packet can be moved to a burst queue of the network appliance and a match-action configuration can be generated based on the first packet. The second packet can be moved from the burst queue to the input queue after the match-action pipeline is configured with the match-action configuration. The match-action pipeline can then process the second packet.