Patent ID: 7519058

Claim:
A method for processing frames in a fibre channel network, comprising: (a) determining if an incoming frame received at a receive segment of a port of a fibre channel switch element includes an inter fabric frame header (“FR_Header”); (b) if there in no FR_Header in step (a), determining if there is a match from a hardware based address mapping cache; (c) routing the frame as a local fabric frame, if there is no match from the address mapping cache in step (b) and the incoming frame did not include the FR_Header as determined in step (a); (d) if there is said match from the address mapping cache in step (b) and the incoming frame did not include the FR_Header as determined in step (a) building the FR_Header; and (e) updating the incoming frame with a new fabric identifier so that the incoming frame is routed as an inter-fabric frame or as the local fabric frame.