Patent ID: 8819235

Claim:
A network adapter, comprising: a plurality of physical network ports for coupling to one or more switches of a data network; and a link aggregation module, within the network adapter, and coupled to the plurality of physical network ports, wherein: the link aggregation module comprises logic for aggregating links associated with the plurality of physical network ports into a single virtual link from a perspective of a virtual Ethernet bridge (VEB) and each physical network port of the plurality of physical network ports, and the link aggregation module interfaces with the VEB of the network adapter to send data to the VEB and receive data from the VEB, wherein the network adapter implements a plurality of virtual functions, each virtual function being associated with a logical partition of one or more host systems, and wherein each of the virtual functions is mapped to one or more of the physical network ports of the network adapter via a mapping/association data structure of the link aggregation module that is used to route traffic between the virtual functions and corresponding physical network ports.