Patent ID: 8174977

Claim:
A first network node comprising: a first receive buffer; a first buffer management block to perform link level credit based flow control for network packets placed by the first buffer management block in the first receive buffer, wherein the network packets are sent by a second network node and passed to the first network node through a network device, and wherein the link level credit based flow control is performed for a link between the first network node and the network device; a second receive buffer; and a second buffer management block to perform end-to-end credit based flow control for network packets that the second buffer management block receives from the first receive buffer and processes before placing data in the second receive buffer, wherein the end-to-end credit based flow control is for data transfer between the first and second network nodes, wherein the second buffer management block comprises: an encapsulator to form outbound network packets for transmission to the second network node; a regulator to indicate whether the second network node for a particular outbound network packet formed by the encapsulator has room to receive the particular outbound network packet, the regulator to track a credit limit for a binding of the first network node to the second network node; a network configuration block to store an initial credit limit for each binding of the first network node to a corresponding network end point, the network configuration block to provide the initial credit limit to the regulator; and a filter to remove configuration information within the network packets received from the first receive buffer, and to forward the configuration information to the network configuration block, the filter also to remove credit update information from the network packets received from the first receive buffer, and to forward the credit update information to the regulator.