Patent ID: 6947393

Claim:
A system for selectively routing data within a fibre channel arbitrated loop, comprising: an intra-loop router configured to be coupled between a first segment and a second segment of the fibre channel arbitrated loop, the intra-loop router including: a router controller configured to be operatively coupled with a receive lead and a transmit lead of the first segment, and with a receive lead and a transmit lead of the second segment; and a processing system coupled with the router controller and configured to cause fibre channel frames received by the router controller to be re-transmitted by the router controller onto a selected one of the first and second segments, the processing system being further configured to maintain first segment device identifiers which identify devices connected to the first segment, where the intra-loop router is configured so that, if one of the first segment device identifiers causes a conflict on the second segment, the intra-loop router obtains a non-conflicting logical identifier corresponding to such first segment device identifier during initialization of the second segment, and where the processing system is configured to map the non-conflicting logical identifier to such first segment device identifier to avoid the conflict.