Patent ID: 8559335

Claim:
A method of creating virtual links between Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) nodes, comprising: receiving Fibre Channel Initialization Protocol (FIP) Discovery Advertisement frames from multiple FCoE device interconnection apparatus (FIA), the FIP Discovery Advertisement frames comprising source Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) addresses, a destination Ethernet MAC address of All-ENode-MACs, Fabric FIP descriptor, and a Priority FIP descriptor, storing a list of one or more of the source Ethernet MAC address, Priority FIP descriptor, and Fabric FIP descriptor for each unique FIP Discovery Advertisement frame received as indicated by the Fabric descriptor, querying at least one Name Server for each source Ethernet MAC address in said list, and for all FCoE devices that match in more than that one Name Server, connect to those FCoE devices using an Ethernet MAC address having a highest priority from matching list items.