Patent Document ID: 20020110120
Application ID: 09205728
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of communicating in a network comprised of one or more end system (ES) nodes, each ES node having a unidirectional ingress and a unidirectional egress port, wherein an egress port of one ES node is coupled to the ingress port of itself or of another ES node and wherein a message frame transmitted from the egress port of any ES node can reach the ingress port of an ES node of the network, comprising: (a) from a source ES node egress port which has a message frame to be transmitted to an ingress port of itself or of another destination ES node, transmitting a queue allocation request, (b) allocating a buffer having a predetermined data block size in the destination ES node, and transmitting a queue fetch request from the destination ES node to the source ES node, (c) receiving the queue fetch request at the first ES node and in response transmitting the predetermined data block of the message frame from the source ES node to the destination ES node, and (d) detecting a destination address in the message frame at the destination ES node and either routing the message to the local resource or to its egress port for retransmission to another ES node.