Patent ID: 7463646

Claim:
A fibre channel switch element, comprising: an acceleration device that (a) connects a plurality of fibre channel devices in an arbitrated loop; (b) monitors frames sent by of the plurality of fibre channel devices during a loop initialization process to determine an arbitrated loop physical address (AL_PA) value selected by each of the plurality of fibre channel devices; (c) creates an AL_PA table based on the AL_PA values selected by each of the plurality of fibre channel devices, wherein the AL_PA table is stored in the acceleration device and the AL_PA table is used for port selection; and (d) during an arbitration process only an arbitrating fibre channel device and a host port for the acceleration device are connected to the arbitrated loop and the acceleration device sends a benign primitive to non-arbitrating devices so that the non-arbitrating devices start the arbitration process when ports of the non-arbitrating devices are ready for arbitration; a global arbitration module that validates arbitration requests received from the plurality of fibre channel devices by using the AL_PA table; a controller module that operates in (i) a loop mode during which an isolated port receives data from an un-isolated port but data from the isolated port is not sent to the arbitrated loop; (ii) a spray mode when there is no active traffic for the arbitrated loop and data is sent from the host port to other ports; and (iii) a connection mode when there is traffic for the arbitrated loop and an isolated port receives a primitive but is unable to send frames to the arbitrated loop; and a state machine that uses a state of the arbitrated loop for changing fibre channel switch element states, instead of using individual port states of the plurality of fibre channel device ports.