Programmable pseudo virtual lanes for fibre channel systems

A method for assigning credit to a plurality of pseudo virtual lanes (“PVLs”) for a fibre channel switch element, comprising:

• assigning an initial priority for each of the plurality of PVLs used by the fibre channel switch element;
• monitoring credit assigned to each of the plurality of PVLs to transmit frames;
• monitoring a transmission wait count for each of the plurality of PVLs, the transmit wait count indicating a time when a PVL is not able to transmit frames;
• adjusting the initial priority for the PVL if credit assigned to the PVL has reached a threshold value;
• adjusting the initial priority based on whether the transmission wait count for each of the plurality of PVLs has exceeded a threshold value providing an indicia for lane congestion;
• receiving a primitive (R RDY) from a receiving port indicating that the receiving port has space available to store a frame;
• and
• assigning the received R_RDY to a PVL from among the plurality of PVLs based on a PVL distribution scheme such that each PVL, regardless of PVL priority has access to a minimum bandwidth for transmitting and receiving Fibre Channel frames.