Patent ID: 8520686

Claim:
A method for interfacing a Fibre Channel network to an Ethernet based network, comprising: establishing a connection between a Fibre Channel device on the Fibre Channel network and an N_Port ID virtualization (NPIV) interface in an Ethernet interconnect module, the connection associated with a port ID assigned by the Fibre Channel device; processing, by the Ethernet interconnect module, a fabric login from a server on the Ethernet based network, the fabric login including a server identifier that is sent to the Fibre Channel device; examining, by a management processor in the Ethernet interconnect module, acknowledgement frames for the fabric login from the Fibre Channel device, to identify an N_Port ID of the server; retrieving a server MAC address stored in the Ethernet interconnect module using the N_Port ID of the server for lookup; and sending the server an Ethernet packet using the server MAC address, wherein the Ethernet packet contains a Fabric Provided MAC Address used to enable the server to communicate with the Fibre Channel device on the Fibre Channel network.