Patent ID: 7433342

Claim:
An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), comprising: switch circuitry for receiving a data frame from a first port and forwarding it to a selected access point on a predetermined port selected from a plurality of access points associated with a plurality of predetermined ports; conversion circuitry in communication with the switch circuitry for converting a data frame between a first protocol and a second protocol; inspection circuitry for inspecting attributes of the data frame; decision circuitry for instructing the switch circuitry to forward the data frame based on the attributes; and a memory mapped interface accessible to the plurality of wireless access points in data communication with the switch circuitry; wherein the conversion circuitry converts the data frame from a first protocol to a second protocol and the switch circuitry stores the converted data frame in the memory mapped interface in a memory corresponding to the selected access point; wherein a data frame is stored in the memory area corresponding to the selected wireless access point for transmitting the packet, the data frame remaining in the memory area until after the data frame is transmitted by the wireless access point and an acknowledgement for the data frame is received by a Media Access Control processor associated with the selected wireless access point.