Patent ID: 8817656

Claim:
A method, comprising: by a node of a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) network: transmitting an FCoE solicitation message to a plurality of FCoE Forwarders (FCFs) using a multicast destination address, the plurality of FCFs being connected over a network segment associated with the node; receiving a unicast FCoE advertisement message from each of the plurality of FCFs in response to the solicitation message, each advertisement message including an address of a corresponding one of the plurality of FCFs; maintaining, for each of a plurality of ports of the node, FCF-MAC address information associated with FCFs reachable through the respective port, the FCF-MAC addresses information being obtained from the advertisement messages received from the plurality of FCFs, wherein the address information is maintained for use in subsequent communications with at least some of the plurality of FCFs; and performing a FLOGI process with a subset of the plurality of FCFs, wherein the FLOGI process is performed using the address information.