Patent ID: 7165120

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a card rack; a plurality of server node cards mounted on the card rack; an interface card mounted on the card rack separate from the plurality of server node cards, the interface card to provide an external connection to another card rack mounted with other server node cards and to provide a connection to an external network; wherein each of the plurality of server node cards include: a server to perform integrated switching, routing, load balancing, and fail-over functions; a plurality of ports, wherein at least one port to directly connect to another server node card in the card rack and at least one port to connect to the interface card to access the external connection to the another card rack including the other server node cards; and a routing table comprising no more than routing information of the directly connected server node cards in the card rack and the immediate connected interface card; and wherein the interface card to connect to each of the server node cards in the card rack via interconnections to at least one of the ports of each of the server node cards.