System guided surrogating control in broadcast and multicast

1. A method to assist in distribution of packets between a plurality of switch elements in a distributed switch, the method comprising:

monitoring a first transmission path of a data frame from a first switch element to a first destination switch element, wherein the first transmission path includes a first surrogate switch element in a first level of a hierarchy, wherein the first transmission path is configured using a default hierarchy configuration that forwards a data frame to at least one of: (i) the first destination switch element and (ii) a second surrogate switch element, wherein the second surrogate switch element is in a second level of the hierarchy;

monitoring a second transmission path of the data frame from the first switch element to the first destination switch element using a second hierarchy configuration, wherein the second hierarchy configuration modifies the default hierarchy configuration and causes the first surrogate switch element to forward the data frame to at least a third surrogate switch element, wherein the third surrogate switch element is not in the first level of the hierarchy;

monitoring a third transmission path of the data frame from the first switch element to the first destination switch element using a third hierarchy configuration, wherein the third hierarchy configuration modifies the default hierarchy configuration and causes the first surrogate switch element to forward the data frame to at least a second destination switch element;

generating a first transmission score, a second transmission score, and a third transmission score, for the first transmission path, the second transmission path, and the third transmission path, respectively, wherein the respective transmission score is based on a time required to transmit the data frame using the respective transmission path and an attribute of each switch element in the respective transmission path; and

upon determining that one of the second and the third transmission score exceeds the first transmission score, using the second or the third transmission path to transmit the data frame to the first destination switch element.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the first, second, and third transmission scores are further based on: (i) a composite attribute score computed based on an attribute score of each switch element in the respective transmission path, (ii) a number of destination ports for the data frame, and (iii) a number of destination computing devices connected to the respective destination switch element.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

upon determining that the attribute score of the first switch element is greater than the attribute score of the first surrogate switch element, designating the first switch element as the first surrogate switch element, wherein designating the first switch element as the surrogate switch element comprises updating a respective routing entry in a routing database, wherein using the respective transmission path to transmit the data frame comprises updating a surrogate hierarchy.

4. The method of claim 3 , further comprising distributing the updated routing database to each of the plurality of switch elements.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the attribute of each switch element comprises at least one of: (i) a waiting time for a plurality of data frames at the respective switch element, (ii) a throughput of the respective switch element, and (iii) a bandwidth of the respective switch element.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein a number of levels in the hierarchy is based on a number of destination ports for the data frame, wherein each level of the hierarchy comprises a respective subset of the plurality of switch elements, wherein the number of levels of the hierarchy is further based on a number of switch elements including the destination ports for the data frame, wherein the data frame is one of: (i) a multicast packet, and (ii) a broadcast packet.