Patent ID: 7542467

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a packet from a network at an out-of-band (OOB) network interface of an OOB platform switch hosted by a computer system, a processor of the computer system executing an operating system during an operating system runtime that occurs after a pre-boot phase of the computer system, the pre-boot phase being between a reset of the processor and loading of the operating system; performing, during the pre-boot phase, at least one of layer-2 and layer-3 store-and-forward switching of the received packet, the performing including: identifying, by examination of the received packet, a destination of the received packet; determining, via the OOB platform switch, a next hop along a path the received packet may be routed to reach the destination, the determining comprising use of a routing table that contains next hop information that is updated when conditions in the network change; and forwarding the received packet to the next hop via the OOB network interface; the identifying of the destination of the received packet and the determining of the next hop being accomplished by the OOB platform switch independent of the operating system and the processor.