Patent ID: 7215680

Claim:
A method comprising: a first device coupled to a Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) opening a network switch coupled to the FC-AL; the first device transmitting a first one or more Fibre Channel (FC) packets to the network switch on the FC-AL subsequent to said opening; and the network switch responding to the first device opening the network switch by transmitting at least part of a second one or more FC packets to the first device on the FC-AL at substantially the same time that the first device is transmitting the first one or more FC packets to the network switch on the FC-AL; wherein the network switch further comprises: a memory queuing incoming FC packets destined for one or more devices on the FC-AL; and data transport logic for: receiving a connection request from the first device of one or more devices on the FC-AL; determining if there are incoming FC packets for the first device queued in the memory in response to the connection request from the first device; issuing a read request to the memory for queued incoming FC packets for the first device; if there are queued incoming FC packets in the memory, receive an acknowledgement signal from the memory so indicating; and if there are no queued incoming FC packets in the memory, receive an empty queue signal from the memory so indicating; and in response to said determining that there are incoming FC packets for the first device queued in the memory, transmitting one or more of the incoming FC packets for the first device queued in the memory to the first device.