Patent ID: 7782784

Claim:
A method of analyzing traffic on a network, comprising: receiving a first Fibre Channel frame from a first port of a network device; discarding a portion of a payload of the Fibre Channel frame to produce a truncated Fibre Channel frame that includes a truncated portion of the payload of the Fibre Channel frame, wherein discarding is performed according to a truncate mode specified in a control frame received prior to the first Fibre Channel frame, wherein the truncate mode indicates an amount that Fibre Channel frames that are received subsequent to the control frame are to be truncated; encapsulating the truncated Fibre Channel frame as an Ethernet frame without replacing the truncated portion of the payload of the Fibre Channel frame with another value; and outputting the Ethernet frame to an analyzing device, wherein the discarded portion of the payload of the Fibre Channel frame is not encapsulated in the Ethernet frame or otherwise output to the analyzing device; wherein the control frame is not output to the analyzing device.