Patent ID: 7515536

Claim:
A method for transporting fibre channel (FC) traffic over a packet-switched communication network, the method comprising: establishing a FC connection between source and destination FC devices via the packet-switched communication network that is not terminated between the source and destination FC devices by: accepting login signaling from the source FC device for logging in with the destination FC device; transporting the login signaling over the packet-switched communication network to the destination FC device; receiving over the packet-switched communication network an FC address of the destination FC device in response to the login signaling; and delivering the FC address to the source FC device; identifying a sub-sequence of repetitive FC signals in a sequence of FC words accepted over a FC link from the source FC device; translating the sequence of the FC words into a sequence of data packets in accordance with a communication protocol supported by the packet-switched communication network, the sequence of the data packets comprising a repetition indication packet that identifies the sub-sequence of repetitive FC signals; and transporting the FC words over the established connection by directing the FC words to the FC address, by transporting the sequence of the data packets over the packet-switched communication network using the communication protocol.