Patent ID: 9319317
Filing Date: 2016-04-19
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A switch stack for forwarding network traffic, comprising: a first switch having first logic and a processor, the first logic having a plurality of ports and configured to forward data packets based on a first forwarding table of the first switch, wherein the first logic is configured to learn a source address of a data packet received from a network via one of the ports on ingress to the stack, wherein the first logic is configured to learn the source address by storing the source address in the first forwarding table and correlating, in the first forwarding table, the source address with a port identifier that identifies the one port, wherein the processor is configured to form and transmit a synchronization message having the source address in response to the data packet received from the network; and a second switch having second logic implemented in hardware, the second logic having a plurality of ports and configured to forward data packets based on a second forwarding table of the second switch, wherein the processor is configured to insert the port identifier into at least one field of the synchronization message such that the second logic is spoofed into determining that the synchronization message has been received by the one port of the first switch thereby causing the second logic to perform a hardware learn of the source address in response to the synchronization message, and wherein the second logic is configured to perform the hardware learn by storing the source address in the second forwarding table and correlating the source address with the port identifier in the second forwarding table.