Patent ID: 7518995

Claim:
A method for managing frame flow in a Fibre Channel network system, comprising: (a) determining if a frame is waiting for transmission at a transmit segment of a port of a Fibre Channel switch element at any given time; wherein the Fibre Channel switch element includes a plurality of ports, each port including a receive segment for receiving frames and a transmit segment for transmitting frames; (b) if a frame is waiting for transmission in step (a), checking if a R_RDY register count value is greater than zero, wherein the R_RDY register stores a value indicating a number of R_RDYs that the port has to send, where R_RDY is a primitive indicating available credit at a receive segment of a destination port; (c) comparing the R_RDY register count value with a threshold value programmed in a threshold register; wherein the threshold register stores the threshold value for controlling how often pending R_RDYs are sent by the transmit segment; (d) sending a R_RDY if the R_RDY register count is greater than zero and greater than the threshold value, based on the comparison in step (c); and (e) sending a certain number of idle primitives after the R_RDY is sent in step (d); wherein the certain number of idle primitives depend on a number of ordered sets that are transmitted since a last frame.