Patent ID: 7447728

Claim:
A network device comprising: a first software component that provides an interface to a first network protocol layer in a stack of network protocol layers, the first software component being a device driver and the first network protocol layer provides an interface to a physical media; a second software component that provides an interface to a second network protocol layer in the stack of network protocol layers, the second software component being a device driver and the second network protocol layer provides an interface to a physical media; a first module associated with the first software component, wherein the first module facilitates communication between the first software component and other software components that provide interfaces to other network protocol layers in the stack of network protocol layers; a second module associated with the second software component, wherein the second module facilitates communication between the second software component and other software components that provide interfaces to other network protocol layers in the stack of network protocol layers; a module manager for controlling creation and destruction of the first and second modules as required to control the first and second software components to service data packets that require a particular protocol and for managing interaction between the first and second modules; a configuration file that defines which software components to use to establish a port for a particular path, wherein the first and second modules correspond to different software components that support different parts of the communications protocol used to create the port for the particular path; and a communications manager for accessing the configuration file to determine the components used to establish the port and for sending requests to the module manager to create modules associated with the software components used to establish the port.