A virtual machine running on an endpoint device may encode a mark comprising routing parameters within one or more packets of a packet stream to indicate services and/or costs to be utilized in processing and/or communicating the packet stream. The virtual machine may communicate the packet stream to another network device. The routing parameters within the marks may indicate device capabilities, service class, quality measurements, latency and/or power usage. The routing parameters may comprise costs that may indicate capacity, efficiency and/or performance of power usage, bandwidth, absolute and/or relative latency, frame-drop eligibility, memory and processing. The packet stream is received and inspected to identify the marks and/or routing parameters. A virtual machine may be initialized and/or configured to process and/or communicate the packet stream based on the routing parameters. Routing may utilize based SPB, TRILL, and/or AVB.