Patent ID: 7876746

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: at least one input circuit to receive frames of data, the frames of data comprising first frames each having first data, and a second frame having second data; at least one output circuit to transmit the first frames; a forwarding engine to transfer the first frames from the at least one input circuit to the at least one output circuit; and a first memory to store switch information, wherein the apparatus operates according to the switch information, wherein the at least one input circuit comprises a remote management unit comprising a first memory controller to modify the switch information stored in the first memory according to the second data in the second frame, and a second memory; a second memory controller to write each of the frames of data to the second memory; and a remote management enable circuit to enable the remote management unit when the second frame is a remote management frame, and wherein the first memory controller writes the second data from the second memory to the first memory when (i) the remote management unit is enabled by the remote management enable circuit and (ii) the remote management frame includes a valid write command.