Patent ID: 9736242
Date: 2017-08-15
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A Fibre Channel (FC) switch, comprising: a chassis; a first PHY converter that is housed in the chassis and that is coupled to a first port on the chassis, wherein FCoE formatted FC Well Known Addresses (WKAs) are registered in the first PHY converter as Ethernet bridging protocol addresses, and wherein the first PHY converter is configured to receive first FC protocol data traffic from an initiator system through the first port and convert the first FC protocol data traffic to first FC over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol data traffic; an Ethernet switch chip that is housed in the chassis and that is coupled to the first PHY converter, wherein standard Ethernet bridging protocol addresses in a cache of the Ethernet switch chip have been replaced with FC routing entries, and wherein the Ethernet switch chip is configured to provide a protocol processing engine that is configured to receive the first FCoE protocol data traffic from the first converter and process the first FCoE protocol data traffic to provide second FCoE protocol data traffic for delivery to a target system; and a second PHY converter that is housed in the chassis and that is coupled to the protocol processing engine and a second port on the chassis, wherein FCoE formatted FC Well Known Addresses (WKAs) are registered in the second PHY converter as Ethernet bridging protocol addresses, and wherein the second PHY converter is configured to receive the second FCoE protocol data traffic from the protocol processing engine, convert the second FCoE protocol data traffic to second FC protocol data traffic, and send the second FC protocol data traffic through the second port to the target system.