Patent ID: 9385969
Filing Date: 2016-07-05
CPC Classification: H04L

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: internally allocating, at a principal switch in a merged Fibre Channel (FC) fabric formed from two separate FC fabrics, a domain identifier (ID) to each switch in the merged FC fabric during an FC domain ID allocation phase; storing, within memory of the principal switch, the domain IDs assigned to each switch in the merged FC fabric; at the principal switch, prior to transmitting any Exchange Fabric Parameters (EFP) frames with domain IDs assigned to a switch in the merged FC fabric, generating a complete domain ID list that includes the domain IDs for all switches in the merged FC fabric; and after generating the complete domain ID list that includes the domain IDs for each switch in the merged fabric, transmitting a single message to all switches in the merged FC fabric, wherein the single message includes the complete domain ID list.