Patent ID: 7404012

Claim:
A shared I/O subsystem for a plurality of computer systems comprising: a plurality of physical I/O interfaces; a plurality of virtual I/O interfaces, wherein each of the computer systems is communicatively coupled to one or more of the virtual I/O interfaces; a forwarding function having a forwarding table that logically arranges the shared I/O subsystem into one or more logical LAN switches, wherein each of the logical LAN switches communicatively couples one or more of the virtual I/O interfaces to at least one of the physical I/O interfaces; wherein, for each of the logical LAN switches, the forwarding function receives a data packet from any one from the group of the physical I/O interfaces and the virtual I/O interfaces, and directs the data packet to at least one from the group of the physical I/O interfaces and the virtual I/O interfaces; and wherein two or more of the physical I/O interfaces are aggregated to form a single logical I/O interface by selectively altering entries in the forwarding table without reconfiguring the computer systems, and based on a destination address of a network packet, the forwarding function selects one or more of the physical I/O interfaces to deliver the network packet to a destination.