Patent ID: 9331961
Filing Date: 2016-05-03
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A network routing/switching blade server comprising: a plurality of network interfaces, including a first set of network interfaces implemented within a first server blade and operable to receive network packets encapsulated within a first plurality of media transmissions each having a first framing media format of a plurality of framing media formats and a second set of network interfaces implemented within a second server blade and operable to transmit network packets encapsulated within a second plurality of media transmissions each having a second framing media format of the plurality of framing media formats, wherein the plurality of framing media formats include one or more of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Gigabit Ethernet (GigE), Frame Relay (FR), Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) and a wireless media format; a plurality of processing resources implemented within one or more server blades coupled to the plurality of network interfaces and shared by the plurality of network interfaces, including a first processing resource upon which a virtual bridging application executes, the virtual bridging application representing a single bridging domain for all network packets received by the network routing/switching blade server; a non-transitory memory, accessible to the first processing resource, having stored therein one or more translation data structures defining translations between the first framing media format and an intermediate format and between the intermediate format and the second framing media format; a switching fabric server blade, coupled to the plurality of network interfaces, forwarding the network packets received from the first set of network interfaces to one or more of the plurality of processing resources; wherein responsive to receiving a network packet, the first set of network interfaces pass the network packet to the virtual bridging application through the switching fabric server blade; the virtual bridging application determines a relay location to which the network packet is to be relayed and whether the relay location is among the second set of network interfaces, which are associated with a disparate framing media format and a disparate media channel than that of the first set of network interfaces; and responsive to an affirmative determination that the relay location is among the second set of network interfaces, the virtual bridging application uses the one or more translation data structures to translate the network packet to the second framing media format before relaying the network packet to the relay location.