Patent ID: 7778245

Claim:
A method of adjusting fields of a datagram in the handling of the datagram in a network device, said method comprising: receiving a datagram, with the datagram having at least module identifier fields and port identifier fields, at a port of a network device; determining whether the received datagram is a unicast datagram; adding or subtracting an offset value to at least one of the module identifier fields and at least one of the port identifier fields of the datagram based on data registers in the network device when the received datagram is a unicast datagram; and forwarding the datagram based on the module and port identifier fields of the datagram; wherein the port of the network device is connected to a legacy device, where a size of each of the module identifier fields and the port identifier fields handled by the legacy device is smaller than a size of the module identifier fields and port identifier fields handled by the network device.