Patent ID: 7751328

Claim:
A system for controlling the flow of frames within a computer network, the system comprising: a receiving unit having an input buffer for temporarily storing received frames, and a congestion detector coupled to the input buffer, whereby the congestion detector is adapted to detect an impending full condition at the input buffer; a transmitting unit having an output buffer for storing a frame being transmitted; a control frame generator coupled to the output buffer, and adapted to create a pause frame; a flow control engine operably coupled to the receiving unit and the transmitting unit, whereby the flow control engine, in response to the congestion detector detecting an impending full at the input buffer, (i) directs the control frame generator to create a pause frame, and (ii) directs the transmitting unit to truncate at least one frame at the output buffer, and to transmit the pause frame; and an error checker configured to compute error detection signatures to be appended to frames, wherein the flow control engine directs the error checker to deliberately corrupt an error detection signature to be appended to the truncated frame to cause the truncated frame to be discarded.