Patent ID: 9590920
Date: 2017-03-07
CPC Classifications: H04L

Claim:
1. A multi-host Gigabit Ethernet Controller for sharing of a physical network among a plurality of host processors in a multi-host computing system, wherein the multi-host Gigabit Ethernet Controller is communicatively coupled to each of the plurality of host processors through a PCIe based link, the multi-host Gigabit Ethernet Controller comprising: a medium access control (MAC) layer common among the plurality of host processors configured to receive data packets for the plurality of host processors through the physical network, wherein the MAC layer is implemented in a data link layer structure, and wherein the MAC layer is further configured to handle wake-on-LAN requests for each of the plurality of host processors; a Layer-2 (L2) switch integrated with the multi-host Gigabit Ethernet Controller comprising at least one port for each of the plurality of host processors, and the MAC layer to exchange data packets between the plurality of host processors and the MAC layer, wherein the L2 switch is configured to parse the received data packets from the MAC layer to determine a MAC destination address; and a plurality of host modules, each coupled to the L2 switch and a host processor from amongst the plurality of host processors configured to concurrently process the data packets for the host processors received from the L2 switch enabling sharing of the physical network among the plurality of host processors, wherein each of the plurality of host modules is configured as at least one of a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) device, a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) device, a non PCIe compliant device, and a non-PCI compliant device with respect to at least one of the plurality of hosts.