Patent ID: 8594082

Claim:
A method of implementing flow control in a switching network including an upper tier and a lower tier including a plurality of lower tier entities, the method comprising: at a master switch in the upper tier having a plurality of ports each coupled to a respective one of the plurality of lower tier entities, implementing on each of the plurality of ports a plurality of virtual ports each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of remote physical interfaces (RPIs) at the lower tier entity coupled to that port; queuing data traffic communicated between the master switch and RPIs on the plurality of lower tier entities within virtual ports among the plurality of virtual ports that correspond to the RPIs on the lower tier entities with which the data traffic is communicated; the master switch enforcing priority-based flow control (PFC) on data traffic of a given virtual port by transmitting, to a lower tier entity at which a particular RPI corresponding to the given virtual port resides, a PFC data frame specifying priorities for at least two different classes of data traffic communicated by the particular RPI, wherein the lower tier entity comprises a follower switch configured in flow through mode and the particular RPI comprises a data port; and the follower switch receiving the PFC data frame, removing an RPI identifier identifying the particular RPI from the PFC data frame to obtain a standard PFC data frame, and transmitting the standard PFC data frame via the data port corresponding to the particular RPI.