Patent ID: 8165146

Claim:
A system for persistently maintaining data using a network for data packets, comprising: a transmission medium associated with the network; a plurality of switches operatively connected to the transmission medium, each switch having an intelligent network controller for delivering the data packets to a device operatively connected to the intelligent network controller in response to a request for the data packets from the device and for determining if the data packets are unexpired based on an expiration property of the data packets and re-transmitting unexpired data packets over the network; wherein the intelligent network controller of each of the plurality of switches being configured to route block input/output (I/O) operation requests from the device to the data packets on the network; wherein the expiration property of the data packets specifies an amount of time the data packets are persistently maintained on the network sufficient to allow the data packets to be stored, accessed, and searched while reverberating on the system.