Patent ID: 8856340

Claim:
A method, in a network adapter, for processing traffic, comprising: receiving traffic in the network adapter from either a host system or an external data network; providing the traffic to a link aggregation module of the network adapter, either via a virtual Ethernet bridge (VEB) or a physical network port, in a plurality of physical network ports, of the network adapter, wherein the link aggregation module logically aggregates a plurality of links into a single virtual link from a perspective of the VEB and each physical network port of the plurality of physical network ports; determining a route for the traffic either to a virtual function of the network adapter or a physical network port of the adapter based on a link aggregation data structure maintained by the link aggregation module of the network adapter; and routing the traffic to either the virtual function or the physical network port based on the determined route, wherein the network adapter implements a plurality of virtual functions, each virtual function being associated with a logical partition of one or more host systems, and wherein each of the virtual functions is mapped to one or more of the physical network ports of the network adapter via the link aggregation data structure of the link aggregation module.