Patent ID: 8451730

Claim:
A network device for implementing a high speed transmission protocol, the network device comprising: a plurality of high speed modules which are connected by a plurality of high speed links, each of the plurality of high speed modules implementing the high speed transmission protocol and each of the plurality of high speed modules being implemented in an Ethernet ring topology, wherein a medium access control layer in each of the plurality of high speed modules is modified such that the medium access control layer is configured to separately queue (i) packets communicated between the high speed modules of the Ethernet ring, (ii) packets entering the Ethernet ring and (iii) packets leaving the Ethernet ring, wherein the modification is transparent to a switching entity in each of the plurality of high speed modules and the medium access control layer is configured to communicate packets from at least two of the separate queues over a same high speed link, and the high speed transmission protocol comprises a plurality of aspects including an in-band messaging mechanism for efficient and responsive traffic management and network operation.