Patent ID: 7272139

Claim:
A method of data transfer in a virtual server environment of a computing network, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of packets to be routed to or from a plurality of virtual servers operating in a single physical device; providing an internal routing table for data link layer routing to or from selected ones of the virtual servers, wherein entries in the internal routing table are learned dynamically while processing selected ones of the received packets at a network layer; and using the internal routing table for routing other ones of the received packets to or from the selected ones of the virtual servers at the data link layer, wherein: the selected ones of the received packets comprise, for each supported pair of input data link layer component and output data link layer component, a first-processed one of the packets which arrives using the input data link layer component and which is addressed to the output data link layer component; and the other ones of the received packets comprise, for each of the supported pairs of input data link layer component and output data link layer component, subsequently-processed ones of the packets which arrive using the input data link layer component and which are addressed to the output data link layer component.