Patent ID: 8724638

Claim:
A layer 2 switch for allowing flexible assignment of VLAN identifiers and selectively processing traffic from different VLANs, the layer 2 switch comprising: (a) a plurality of ports, each port being assigned a port identifier; (b) a classification engine coupled to the plurality of ports, the classification engine including a virtual switch identification module for identifying a virtual switch corresponding to a first received layer 2 frame based on a port identifier corresponding to a first port on which the first layer 2 frame is received and a first VLAN identifier extracted from the first received layer 2 frame, wherein the virtual switch identification module is configured to assign a second virtual switch identifier to a second layer 2 frame having the first VLAN identifier and arriving at a second port of the layer 2 switch; (c) a virtual switch identification data structure being accessible by the virtual switch identification module for assigning a virtual switch identifier to the received layer 2 frame; (d) a virtual switch frame processor operatively associated with the virtual switch identification module for selectively processing the received first and second layer 2 frames based on the first and second virtual switch identifiers, wherein selectively processing the first and second received layer 2 frames includes forwarding the first layer 2 frame to a different output port from the second layer 2 frame based on the first and second virtual switch identifiers; and (e) a per-virtual-switch data structure accessible by the virtual switch frame processor containing data for selectively processing the received first and second layer 2 frames.