US 9,071,558 B1 · Method and system for extended port addressing

Abstract

Methods and systems for routing frames are provided. A system includes an initiator operationally coupled to a first switch that is coupled to a second switch. The first switch includes a plurality of ports for sending and receiving frames and includes a routing table that identifies a port identifier steering table based on an area field of a frame header of a frame received by the first switch. The first switch also includes a plurality of port identifier tables, where each port identifier table is associated with a unique area field and identifies a same port of the first switch for a plurality of area fields. The second switch stores an area steering table with port identification information associated with an area field of a frame header of a frame received by the second switch and a same port of the second switch is assigned to multiple area fields.

Claims15

Dependent claims

A method for routing frames in a network, the method comprising:

receiving a frame at a port of a network device;
extracting a destination field from the frame;
using an area field from the extracted destination field as an index into an area steering data structure;
identifying, using the area steering data structure, an egress port of the network device corresponding to the extracted destination field through which to route the frame;
and
routing the frame through the identified egress port;
wherein the area steering data structure stores multiple entries for a same egress port corresponding to different area fields of a same domain.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Method and system for extended port addressing

Life of this patent

Method and system for extended port addressing

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims15