Patent ID: 8010707

Claim:
A network communication system, comprising: a single integrated convergent network controller (ICNC) chip; and a single Ethernet connector for handling a plurality of layer 2 /layer 4 /layer 5 (L 2 /L 4 /L 5 ) types of network traffic transported via a single fabric, wherein: the single Ethernet connector is coupled to the single ICNC chip; the single fabric is a physical link coupled to a plurality of servers; the single ICNC chip comprises an L 2 /L 4 /L 5 adapter operable to process the plurality of L 2 /L 4 /L 5 types of network traffic for the plurality of servers, wherein the plurality of L 2 /L 4 /L 5 types of network traffic comprise: network traffic, storage traffic, interprocess communication (IPC) traffic and cluster traffic, which are transported via the single fabric, wherein the network traffic comprises Internet or Ethernet traffic, and wherein the storage traffic comprises traffic from storage devices accessible via a network.