Patent ID: 7016352

Claim:
A multiport network device comprising: a receiver configured to receive data frames from a network, each of the data frames having header information that includes at least a source field indicating a source of the frame and a destination field indicating an intended destination address for the data frame; a transmitter configured to transmit the data frames to the network through a plurality of transmit ports; internal rules checking logic coupled to an output of the receiver, the internal rules checking logic receiving the header information relating to the data frames received by the receiver and, based on the header information, generating a forwarding descriptor that identifies the transmit ports and generating a new intended destination address; and a queue configured to store the forwarding descriptors and the new intended destination address for the data frames as pairs of sequential words, and transmit each pair of sequential words to the transmitter; wherein the transmitter writes the new intended destination address to the destination field before transmitting the data frame.