Patent ID: 7308001

Claim:
A method for transmitting Fibre Channel frames from a Fibre Channel network at a first location to a Fibre Channel network at a second location over an Internet protocol network comprising the steps of: a) receiving a plurality of Fibre Channel frames from the Fibre Channel network at the first location; b) combining the plurality of Fibre Channel frames into a single datagram; c) adding transport and IP headers to the single datagram; d) fragmenting the single datagram into a plurality of data link level frames; e) transmitting the data link level frames from the first location over the Internet protocol network; f) receiving the data link level frames from the Internet protocol network at the second location; g) combining the data link level frames back into the single datagram; h) extracting the plurality of Fibre Channel frames from the single datagram; and i) transmitting the plurality of Fibre Channel frames over the Fibre Channel network at the second location.