Patent ID: 7872989

Claim:
A system comprising: a network comprising a plurality of nodes wherein forwarding is controlled, at least in part, by an optimized spanning tree protocol (OSTP) comprising a selective forwarding state; a server cluster; and wherein, in a full-mesh portion of the network, the OSTP is aware of the full-mesh portion, is enabled to provide, to the nodes connected by the full-mesh portion, an explicit indication of whether or not full mesh topology is considered established, and is further enabled to forward packets in one hop between any two of the nodes connected by the full-mesh portion; wherein the full mesh is a first full mesh; wherein the server cluster comprises a plurality of servers, each one of a first subset of the servers comprises one or more of the nodes of the network, and a second subset of the first subset of the servers are connected in a second full mesh; and wherein the second full mesh is identical to the first full mesh.