Patent ID: 7751400

Claim:
A method for Ethernet virtualization using an elastic FIFO memory to facilitate flow of unknown traffic to a virtual host, the method comprising: receiving a packet that represents unknown traffic on a network; performing a first test to ascertain whether or not a destination connection can be determined for the received packet wherein, if a destination connection can be determined, a second test is performed to ascertain whether or not one or more connection-specific resources required to send the packet to a virtual host memory corresponding to the destination connection are available; if a destination connection for the packet cannot be determined, passing the packet to a store engine; if the one or more connection-specific resources are not available, passing the packet to the store engine; the store engine obtaining a free packet buffer from an elastic first-in, first-out (FIFO) memory, wherein the free packet buffer is an empty packet-sized block of memory in a local data store; the store engine moving the packet into the free packet buffer and submitting the free packet buffer to the elastic FIFO memory; performing a monitoring procedure to detect both an availability of connection-specific resources and a presence of one or more waiting packets with a known destination connection; when a destination connection with one or more waiting packets and available connection-specific resources; are both detected, removing the packet from the local data store; allocating the one or more connection-specific resources required to send the packet to the virtual host memory corresponding to the destination connection; and writing the packet to the virtual host memory.