Patent ID: 8582581

Claim:
An apparatus with Ethernet traffic management for protocol conversion, said apparatus comprising: a primary central processing unit (CPU) having first and second Ethernet interfaces; a protocol translation CPU having third and fourth Ethernet interfaces; first and second Ethernet communications interfaces; a manageable Ethernet switch having first and second ports coupled to the first and second Ethernet interfaces of the primary CPU, respectively, third and fourth ports coupled to the third and fourth Ethernet interfaces of the protocol translation CPU, respectively, and fifth and sixth ports coupled to the first and second Ethernet communications interfaces, respectively; wherein Ethernet traffic having a protocol recognized by the primary CPU is routed between the first or second Ethernet communications interfaces and the first or second Ethernet interfaces of the primary CPU by the manageable Ethernet switch, and Ethernet traffic not having a protocol recognized by the primary CPU is routed between the first or second Ethernet communications interfaces and the protocol translation CPU by the manageable Ethernet switch, whereby the protocol translation CPU converts the Ethernet traffic having the unrecognized protocol to Ethernet traffic having the recognized protocol and then sending the recognized protocol converted Ethernet traffic to the primary CPU.