Patent ID: 6185203
Filing Date: 2001-02-06
Classification: H04B,H04L,H04Q

Abstract:
A fibre channel switch having a plurality of ports for routing received frames having fields between multiple attached devices comprising:multiple port control modules for receiving frames from and transmitting frames to the attached devices,route determination apparatus for selecting a route between the port control modules,connectivity apparatus coupled to the route determination apparatus and to the port control module for effecting transfer of frames between the ports, andapparatus in each of the multiple port control modules for generating fabric reject frames or fabric busy frames upon certain predefined conditions, the apparatus comprising:a register for receiving at least certain of the fields or the received frame for possible modification to fabric reject or fabric busy, anda hardware state machine which receives an indication of whether to modify a received frame into a fabric reject frame or a fabric busy frame and generates one or more outputs to select between modification of the frame to a fabric reject frame or a fabric busy frame, or to maintain the fields as received in the register.