Patent ID: 8135806

Claim:
A method for decoupling devices in a network for use by a system-wide application, the method comprising: accumulating topology information for the network, the topology information including parent and child connection information between two or more stacked units of the network and including transmit and receive connections for each stack port, wherein each of the stacked units includes a processor and at least one switch device; analyzing the topology information using the transmit and receive connections for each stack port to enable communications between the stack ports and to determine packet routing between the stacked units; distributing the topology information for the network based on the analyzed topology information to each of the stacked units; and virtually attaching a remote switch device to the network by decoupling a processor of the remote switch device such that the remote switch device is virtually controlled by a processor of a different stacked unit and the remote switch device appears and functions as a local switch device to system-wide applications, wherein the decoupled processor of the remote switch device functions as a local central processing unit to process local device functions, wherein virtually attaching the remote switch device comprises using a remote procedure call (RPC) to virtually attach devices that are in remaining units of the network.