Patent ID: 9264256
Filing Date: 2016-02-16
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: (a) receiving configuration information onto a Media Access Control (MAC) layer interface circuit of a Network Flow Processor (NFP) integrated circuit, wherein the configuration information includes port definition configuration information and Priority Code Point (PCP) remap information, wherein the PCP remap information includes a plurality of portions; (b) using the port definition configuration information to configure the MAC layer interface circuit to include a first number of physical MAC ports; (c) receiving a plurality of PCP flows of ethernet frames via the physical MAC ports onto the NFP integrated circuit, wherein all the frames of a PCP flow are received via the same physical MAC port and wherein all of the frames of the PCP flow have the same PCP value; (d) storing each respective portion of the PCP remap information in association with a corresponding respective one of the physical MAC ports; and (e) for each frame received via a particular physical MAC port using the PCP value of the frame and the portion of the PCP remap information associated with the physical MAC port to assign the frame to one of a second number of virtual channels, wherein the assigning of (e) involves assigning more than one PCP flow to the same virtual channel, wherein each PCP flow received in (c) via a particular physical MAC port has a relative priority with respect to each other PCP flow received in (c) via the physical MAC port, wherein the relative priorities of PCP flows within the particular physical MAC port are maintained with respect to one another after the assigning of (e) even though some PCP flows may be assigned to the same virtual channel, and wherein the first number multiplied by eight is greater than the second number.