Patent ID: 8750320

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a plurality of port means for coupling to a plurality of Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop networks (FCAL nets), each port means configured to couple to a FCAL net and each FCAL net having one or more node loop (NL) nodes thereon; a switching means coupled to said plurality of port means for coupling selectable pairs of said port means together by separate channels; management logic providing a priority level for access to busy destination nodes and wherein the priority level is escalated based on the number of consecutive denials of a connection request; and wherein each of said plurality of port means comprises means for: receiving an Open Point to Point primitive (OPN) from a source node on the FCAL net coupled to the port means, accessing a routing table, wherein the routing table includes a plurality of Arbitrated Loop Physical Addresses (ALPAs) of the plurality of FCAL nets, using at least an Arbitrated Loop Physical Address (ALPA) of the received OPN primitive to determine which of the plurality of port means a destination node identified in the OPN is coupled to and enable switching of data from the source node to the destination node, and communicating with the port means coupled to the destination node to select one of said channels through said switching means and to establish said channel for communication of primitives and data frames between said source node and said destination node.