Patent ID: 9426546
Filing Date: 2016-08-23
CPC Classification: H04L,H04Q

Claim Text:
1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied therewith for managing a distributed Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) fabric in which Fibre Channel frames are encapsulated in Ethernet frames, the computer-readable program code comprising: computer-readable program code configured to transmit from a first FCoE data-plane forwarder (FDF) to a controlling FCoE forwarder (cFCF) of the distributed Fibre Channel fabric a discovery advertisement message containing a fabric name field comprising a zero value; computer-readable program code configured to receive a unicast discovery solicitation message from the cFCF; computer-readable program code configured to instantiate a switch link between the cFCF of the distributed Fibre Channel fabric and the first FDF responsive to accepting a request to establish the switch link comprising a VA_port to VA_port link, wherein the distributed Fibre Channel fabric further comprises a set of FDFs, and wherein a VA_port is an instance of an FC-2V sublevel of the Fibre Channel; computer-readable program code configured to receive, from the cFCF, a distributed switch membership distribution (DFMD) message, wherein the DFMD message contains a fabric name identifying the distributed Fibre Channel fabric; and computer-readable program code configured to modify the first FDF to join the distributed Fibre Channel fabric based on the fabric name contained in the DFMD message.