Batching and Compression for Ip Transmission

A storage router comprising:

• a) a host frame interface that receives host frames;
• b) a network interface in communication with a datagram network;
• c) a processor capable of operating an algorithm, the algorithm triggering the formation of a batch of frames having a plurality of host frames received from the host frame interface;
• d) a compression object that compresses the batch of frames into a compressed batch of frames;
• e) a transport object that adds a transport header to the batch of frames to create a transport segment;
• and
• f) a network object that adds a network header to the transport segment to create a network datagram, the network objecting presenting the datagram to the network interface for transmission over the datagram network.

A method for transmitting Fibre Channel frames from a first Fibre Channel network to a second Fibre Channel network over a Internet Protocol network comprising the steps of:

• a) storing Fibre Channel frames received from the first Fibre Channel network on a host frame buffer;
• b) creating a batch of frames consisting of a plurality of Fibre Channel frames stored on the host frame buffer;
• c) compressing the batch of frames to create a compressed batch of frames;
• d) forming a transport segment from the compressed batch of frames;
• e) forming an IP datagram from the transport segment;
• f) fragmenting the IP datagram into multiple data link frames;
• g) transmitting the data link frames over the Internet Protocol network;
• h) receiving the data link frames from the Internet Protocol network;
• i) reforming the IP datagram from the received data link frames;
• j) extracting the compressed batch of frames from the reformed IP datagram;
• k) decompressing the compressed batch of frames back into the batch of Fibre Channel frames;
• and
• l) transmitting the plurality of Fibre Channel frames in the batch of frames over the second Fibre Channel network.

A method for compressing IP datagrams comprising the steps of:

• a) creating a batch of at least two IP datagrams;
• b) compressing the batch of IP datagrams to create a compressed batch;
• c) forming a transport segment from the compressed batch;
• d) forming at least one new datagram from the transport segment;
• and
• e) transmitting the new datagram.