Fibre channel switching fabric

A fibre channel switch for routing Fibre Channel Frames between multiple attached devices supporting at least connectionless based service between attached devices, comprising:

• multiple port control modules, the port control module being adapted for connection to an attached device,
• a router for routing Fibre Channel Frames, the router including registers for holding blocked route requests and a hardware finite state machine which causes the registers to dequeue the blocked route requests upon predefined conditions, the router being in communication with the port control modules, and
• a switch core including a crossbar for support of connectionless based service for routing Fibre Channel Frames between attached devices.

A fibre channel switch for connecting multiple attached devices which sends fabric reject (F_RJT) and fabric busy (F_BSY) frames upon predefined conditions between attached devices, comprising:

• multiple port control modules, the port control module being adapted for connection to an attached device,
• a router, the router being in communication with the port control modules to receive route requests and to generate route responses and to provide the route responses to the port control modules, the router comprising a route determination module which receives an input route request and route state information and determines the routing response, the router including redefined F_RJT and F_BSY action and reason codes, and if the response is a fabric reject or fabric busy, providing an output signal to select the specific action and reason codes and store the selected action and reason codes in a hardware register, and
• a switch core disposed between the port control modules and coupled to the router.