Patent ID: 6980547

Claim:
A system comprising: a plurality of ports for sending and receiving frames; a local switching device that performs packet switching; a local forwarding database corresponding and coupled to the local switching device, the database allowing the local switching device to look up a known address that has been previously obtained and forward frames based on the known address; and a remote switching processing device having a programmable processor that receives and processes frames, wherein the local switching device sends an unknown destination address frame to all destination ports requesting a reply frame when a destination address is unknown in the local forwarding database, the local switching device receives the reply frame from a destination port at a local switching device receiving port and determines if a source address of the reply frame is known in the local forwarding database, and records associations between Media Access Control (MAC) addresses and local switching device receiving Ports by forwarding a response frame to the remote switching processing device, the remote switching processing device processes the received response frame and transmits a processing directive to the local forwarding database corresponding to the local switching device directing the local switching device to update the local forwarding database with information including the source address associated with the local switching device receiving port, and each of the forwarded frames includes an appended word, the appended word being encoded with an ingress switch engine number and an incoming port number, the ingress switch engine number indicating a specific local switching device, the incoming port number indicating the incoming port number of a port from which unknown address frames are being sent, the ingress switch engine and incoming port numbers being used to allow an egress switch engine to map the unknown addresses to the ingress switch engine number and the incoming port number.