Patent ID: 7519080

Claim:
A method of encapsulating a stream of Fibre Channel words into distributed delimiter frame-mode Generic Framing Procedure (GFP) frames, the method comprising: ordering, by a transport interface, bytes of each Fibre Channel word in a payload for a distributed delimiter frame-mode GFP frame with a value from a first counter indicative of a current number of bytes in said distributed delimiter frame-mode GFP frame, including the substeps of: determining whether a current Fibre Channel word is Start of Frame (SOF) Ordered Set, End of Frame (EOF) Ordered Set, or neither; if said current Fibre Channel word is an SOF Ordered Set indicative of the beginning a Fibre Channel frame, adjusting said first counter by a predetermined amount to accommodate insertion of distributed delimiter header bytes into said frame-mode GFP frame payload before said SOF Ordered Set bytes of a Fibre Channel frame including counting the number of Fibre Channel words ordered in said distributed delimiter frame-mode GFP frame payload as of said current Fibre Channel word; if said current Fibre Channel word is an EOF Ordered Set indicative of the end of a Fibre Channel frame, setting said distributed delimiter bytes to include a length of said Fibre Channel frame including counting the number of Fibre Channel words ordered in said distributed delimiter frame-mode GFP frame payload as of said current Fibre Channel word; if said current Fibre Channel word is neither an SOF Ordered Set nor an LOF Ordered Set, totaling the number of Fibre Channel words in a Fibre Channel frame ordered in said distributed delimiter frame-mode GFP frame payload as of said current Fibre Channel word if said current Fibre Channel word is part of said Fibre Channel frame; repeating said determining, adjusting and setting substeps until said first counter reaches a predetermined value and the current Fibre Channel word is not part of an Fibre Channel frame, then terminating said ordering step for said distributed delimiter frame-mode GFP frame payload.