Patent ID: 7548556

Claim:
A method of securing a communication between a first device and a second device over a network fabric, the method comprising: providing a network fabric of network elements interconnected via a plurality of data links where the network fabric includes a first port on a first network element and a second port on a second, different network element; allowing the first device and the second device to exchange a communication through the network fabric; establishing a secure port-to-port session between the first port and the second port; constructing within the port-to-port session a plurality of communication paths between the first port and the second port, where the communication paths are constructed from active data links selected from the plurality of data links according to a secure function that operates based on a secret key, and where each communication path differs from each other by at least one intervening network element; dividing the communication into data chunks by the network fabric; and transmitting at least two of the data chunks from the first port to the second port through different ones of the plurality of communication paths.