Patent ID: 8098574
Filing Date: 2012-01-17
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A switch for use in a switch system including a plurality of switches configured to operate as a single global switch having a plurality of global ports, the plurality of switches comprising one or more leaf switches and one or more spine switches, the switch comprising a plurality of local physical ports configured to receive and transmit frames of data, only the local physical ports on the one or more leaf switches are configurable as global ports the switch further comprising switching logic for facilitating transfer of the frames among the local physical ports, the switching logic comprising a media access control (MAC) mapping logic mapping MAC addresses to global ports only, wherein the MAC mapping-logic is used by the one or more leaf switches but not by the one or more spine switches for mapping MAC addresses to global ports, the switching logic further comprising a global port mapping logic for mapping the local physical ports to global port identifiers, each of the global port identifiers being unique within the switch system and representing one or more of the global ports, the global port mapping logic being configured to map each of the global port identifiers to a corresponding subset of the local physical ports by which the frames are transmitted to reach the corresponding global port.