Patent ID: 7603453

Claim:
A method for establishing links between Fibre Channel (FC) node devices through a FC fabric without using FC Address Resolution Protocol (FARP), the method comprising: assigning, by a computer system, a common name to a pair of ports without assigning an IP address to each of the pair of ports, wherein the common name is assigned to each port of the pair of ports, each port in the pair of ports is located on first and second FC node devices, respectively, and the pair of ports includes a source port and a destination port; storing, by the computer system, the common name-to-port assignment within a name server for the FC fabric; configuring, by the computer system, the first FC node device to query the name server to obtain an FC address identifier for the port located on the second FC node device based on the common name, and configuring the second FC node device to query the name server to obtain an FC address identifier for the port located on the first FC node device based on the common name; and configuring, by the computer system, the first FC node device to create a link between the pair of ports using the FC address identifier for the second FC node device, and configuring the second FC node device to create a link between the pair of ports using the FC address identifier for the first FC node device.