Inbound blocking of data received from a LAN in a multi-processor virtualization environment

1. An incoming LAN traffic management system comprising:

an I/O adapter configured to receive incoming packets from an Ethernet;

a plurality of hosts coupled to the I/O adapter and each having a host buffer;

a data router configured to block information received by the I/O adapter into blocks and store the blocks in a storage block address list (SBAL) associated with at least one of the plurality of hosts and in accordance with blocking parameters for the at least one of the plurality of hosts, the data router including an expiration engine configured to expire the SBAL before it is full if at least one predetermined threshold is exceeded; and

a search engine in electrical communication with the expiration engine and configured to locate an active SBAL, the search engine configured to:

examine a two-dimensional array having sequential rows and containing representations of active SBAL's and wherein examining includes performing a first pass beginning at a cell at a first offset in a first row and a second pass after completion of the first pass beginning at a cell at a second offset different than the first offset in the next sequential row.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the SBAL includes 16 SBALE's.

3. The system of claim 2 , wherein each SBALE includes 4K bytes of address space.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the expiration engine is configured to expire an SBAL if a large packet inter-packet timer has expired.

5. The system of claim 1 , wherein the expiration engine is configured to expire an SBAL if a small packet inter-packet timer has expired.

6. The system of claim 1 , wherein the expiration engine is configured to expire an SBAL if a total time timer has expired.

7. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:

a pool of programmable timers; and

a timer select array;

wherein each SBAL is assigned three programmable timers from the pool of programmable timers.

8. A method of expiring storage block address lists (SBAL's) during the blocking of incoming LAN traffic, each SBAL being a portion of computer memory for storing blocks of the inbound LAN traffic, comprising:

locating, at a receiving computing device, an SBAL that has passed its active life-span, locating including:

electronically examining a two-dimensional expiration array stored in the receiving computing device and having sequential rows and containing representations of active SBAL's, wherein examining includes removing the SBAL from an active SBAL list in the receiving computing device;

transferring all data packets in the SBAL to a host computing device; and

placing the SBAL in a used SBAL list.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising:

locating an active connection; and

performing at least one expiration check on the active connection.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein performing includes determining if one of the total expiration time or the interpacket expiration time has been exceeded.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein performing includes determining if the auto-expiration indicator has been set to a predetermined value.

12. A computer program product for executing the expirations of SBAL's during the blocking of inbound LAN traffic, each SBAL being a portion of computer memory for storing blocks of the inbound LAN traffic, the computer program product comprising:

a computer-readable storage medium for storing instructions for executing the expiration if SBAL's during the blocking of incoming LAN traffic, the expiring of SBAL's comprising a method of:

locating an SBAL that has passed its active life-span, locating including:

electronically examining a two-dimensional expiration array stored in the receiving computing device and having sequential rows and containing representations of active SBAL's, wherein examining includes performing a first pass beginning at a cell in a first row at a first offset and a second pass after completion of the first pass beginning at a cell at a second offset different than the first offset in the next sequential;

removing the SBAL from an active SBAL list;

transferring all data packets in the SBAL to a host; and

placing the SBAL in a used SBAL list.