Patent ID: 8804572

Claim:
A method for providing a distributed switch system (DSS) in a Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL)-compliant network, comprising: providing by an ingress network device in the TRILL-compliant network data to a received packet, the data including instructions related to a feature of the DSS, the instructions inserted into a TRILL header generated at the ingress network device; outputting the TRILL header to an egress network device in the TRILL-compliant network; determining whether the ingress network device and the egress network device are members of the DSS; synchronizing a hash computation of a data flow related to the TRILL header among network devices in the DSS that include the ingress network device and the egress network device for determining an output port for the data flow; processing the instructions by the egress network device in response to determining that ingress and egress devices are members of the DSS.