Patent ID: 6850518

Claim:
A method for providing end-to-end source route information to source and destination end stations coupled to respective local and remote source-route bridge (SRB) subnetworks of a data link switching (DLSw) network, the local and remote SRB subnetworks including respective local and remote DLSw peer devices that communicate over an intermediate wide area network (WAN), the method comprising the steps of: extracting the source route information from a routing information field (RIF) of a first token ring (TR) explorer frame at the local DLSw device; loading the source route information into a first control vector at the local DLSw device; transporting the first control vector over the WAN to the remote DLSw device; extracting the source route information from the first control vector at the remote DLSw device; loading the extracted source route information into a RIF of a second TR explorer frame; and transmitting the second TR explorer frame over the remote SRB subnetwork to the destination end station such that, upon receiving the second TR explorer frame, the destination end station has complete source route information representative of an end-to-end session with the source end station.