Patent ID: 8154990

Claim:
A Fibre channel (FC) switch configured to provide in-order frame delivery following changes to a network topology of an FC fabric, the FC switch comprising: a processor configured to execute a routing protocol module configured to select network paths connecting the FC switch and a second switch in the FC fabric, wherein the routing protocol module is configured to perform an operation, the operation comprising: upon determining that a detected change in network topology of the FC fabric allows for in-order frames subsequently sent from the FC switch to the second switch in the FC fabric to be delivered out-of-order at a destination device: obtaining, from a memory on the FC switch, a local interface index and a remote interface index for one or more links connecting the FC switch and the second switch, the one or more links affected by the detected change in network topology, performing a stop-on-mark on each of the one or more affected links, sending a flush frame to the second switch for each of the one or more affected links, wherein the flush frame includes at least the remote interface index, initiating a timer, and preventing any of the in-order frames from being forwarded to the second switch over the one or more affected links, until either (i) receiving an acknowledgment frame from the second switch or (ii) the timer expires.