Patent ID: 8121038

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving by a first network device a Backwards Congestion Notification (BCN) frame from a congestion point, wherein the BCN frame that is received indicates information pertaining to congestion for a flow associated with a source address and a destination address; receiving a frame at an ingress port of the first network device; determining a source address and a destination address of the frame by the first network device; determining by the first network device that the source address of the frame is equal to the source address identified in the BCN frame, and that the destination address of the frame is equal to the destination address identified in the BCN frame; calculating a flow hash based at least upon the source address and the destination address by the first network device; forming a congestion management (“CM”) tag that includes the flow hash and additional information pertaining to the congestion for the flow associated with the source address and the destination address; inserting the CM tag in the frame by the first network device; and forwarding the frame by the first network device to the destination address; wherein the BCN frame that is received indicates a manner in which traffic associated with the flow identified by the source address and the destination address is to be handled by another network device receiving the BCN frame; wherein the another network device is an edge switch and the congestion point is a core switch.