APPLICATION OF NETWORK FLOW RULE ACTION BASED ON PACKET COUNTER

In some examples, a network switch includes an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) including a Network Packet Counter (NPC), a processing resource, and a memory resource storing machine readable instructions. The instructions can, for example, cause the processing resource to assign, in accordance with instructions received by a Software-Defined Network (SDN) controller, a packet flow rule for certain packets received by the network switch to the NPC; modify, with the NPC, a value for a counter associated with the given packet flow rule for received packets that match the pattern of the given packet flow rule; and apply an action to the received packet in accordance with the flow rule only when the value for the counter is less than a threshold value.