Patent ID: 8135918

Claim:
In a computer network that implements the internet small computer systems interface protocol to enable storage access across the computer network, a method for de-duplicating data in-band in the computer network, the method comprising: receiving a first data block for storage at a first storage address; assigning a first probabilistically unique identifier to the first data block; comparing the first probabilistically unique identifier to a plurality of second probabilistically unique identifiers assigned to a plurality of second data blocks previously stored in the network; if the first probabilistically unique identifier is identical to a second probabilistically unique identifier assigned to a second data block, indicating that the first data block is identical to the second data block stored at a second storage address, adding an entry to a routing table to re-route future read requests specifying the first storage address to the second storage address without storing the first data block at the first storage address, wherein the entry establishes a relationship between the first storage address and the second probabilistically unique identifier and future requests for the first storage address are translated into the second probabilistically unique identifier to re-route the future requests for the first storage address to the second storage address.