Patent ID: 7940696

Claim:
A method of remotely booting computing nodes in a switching domain, the switching domain capable of connecting to other switching domains through a network switch, the method comprising: receiving, in the network switch, a wakeup request packet that requests activation of one or more computing nodes in the switching domain, the wakeup request packet having a process port value that specifies physical ports on the network switch to which the one or more computing nodes are physically connected, wherein the wakeup request packet requests activation of a single computing node in the switching domain; identifying, by the network switch, a network address for each computing node to be activated based on the physical port on the network switch to which each computing node to be activated is physically connected, further comprising: calculating a remainder of dividing the process port value by a predefined divisor, determining whether the remainder specifies a single physical port on the network switch, and determining, from a network address table, the network address associated with the physical port specified by the remainder if the remainder specifies a single physical port on the network switch; generating, by the network switch, a wakeup packet for each computing node to be activated based on the identified network address for that computing node, each wakeup packet instructing one of the computing nodes to activate; and transmitting, by the network switch to each computing node to be activated, the wakeup packet for that computing node.