Patent ID: 7835362

Claim:
A method for the management of sequence-sensitive, connection-oriented traffic on a multi-link aggregated port, the method comprising: at a first end of a multi-link aggregated port, selectively enabling only a first constituent link of a plurality of constituent links forming a logical Link Aggregation Group to transmit data traffic in a first direction across the first constituent link via a transmit state block associated with the first constituent link, wherein the first constituent link is enabled without coordinating with any other node; at the first end of the multi-link aggregated port, selectively enabling all of the plurality of constituent links to receive data traffic from a second direction across the plurality of constituent links via a plurality of receive state blocks associated with the plurality of constituent links; at the second end of the multi-link aggregated port, selectively enabling only a second constituent link of the plurality of constituent links to transmit data traffic in the second direction across the second constituent link via a transmit state block associated with the second constituent link, wherein the second constituent link is enabled without coordinating with the first end of the multi-link aggregated port; at the second end of the multi-link aggregated port, selectively enabling all of the plurality of constituent links to receive data traffic from the first direction across the plurality of constituent links via a plurality of receive state blocks associated with the plurality of constituent links; and checking a receive state block responsive to receiving data traffic from the second direction across a constituent link in order to determine whether to accept the data traffic, where to forward the data traffic, and how to manipulate the data traffic; wherein the transmit state blocks and receive state blocks comprise connection information, wherein the connection information comprises one or more of rate enforcement information, policing state information, hardware resource allocation information, bandwidth information, cross-connection information, and label manipulation information.