Patent ID: 7990975

Claim:
A method for processing a frame at a transmit segment of a port of a switch element, comprising: (a) determining if support for a virtual storage area network (“VSAN”) is enabled at the port of the switch element; (b) if VSAN support is enabled, determining if an encapsulation mode for the port is enabled for processing a tagging header that includes a VSAN identifier value for identifying the VSAN, (c) if the encapsulation mode is enabled, determining if hard zoning is enabled; wherein hard zoning is used to enforce a frame by frame zoning by the switch element; (d) if hard zoning is enabled, then verifying if a domain value in a source identifier of a frame header of the frame matches with a domain entry of an address look up table (ALUT); wherein the entries of the address look up for the verification are selected based on if a zone mask using an area field or a port identifier field is enabled; (e) removing the tagging header from the frame when the encapsulation mode is enabled; and (f) transmitting the frame to a destination.