Patent ID: 8351352

Claim:
A method for transmitting information in a network comprising a plurality of RBridges, the plurality of RBridges including a first RBridge and a second RBridge, the method comprising: sending, from the first RBridge to the second RBridge, first capability information indicative of whether the first RBridge supports any of hop-by-hop reversible frame aggregation, reversible header compression, or reversible data compression; receiving, at the first RBridge, second capability information from the second RBridge, indicative of whether the second RBridge supports any of hop-by-hop reversible frame aggregation, reversible header compression, or reversible data compression; determining, at the first RBridge, based at least in part on the received second capability information, whether any of hop-by-hop reversible frame aggregation, reversible header compression, or reversible data compression are supported by both the first RBridge and the second RBridge; when it is determined that at least one capability in the group of capabilities comprising hop-by-hop reversible frame aggregation, reversible header compression, or reversible data compression is supported by both the first RBridge and the second RBridge, automatically applying the at least one capability to at least one data frame transmitted from the first RBridge to the second RBridge, wherein the first RBridge is not an ingress RBridge for the at least one data frame or wherein the second RBridge is not an egress RBridge for the at least one data frame, wherein the at least one capability comprises at least two capabilities, wherein the at least two capabilities include hop-by-hop reversible frame aggregation and reversible data compression, and wherein the act of automatically applying further comprises: applying hop-by-hop reversible frame aggregation to that at least one data frame before applying reversible data compression to the at least one data frame.