Granted Patent B1

US 9,100,334 · App. 13/852,885 · Granted Aug 4, 2015

Abstract

Claims (37)

1. A machine implemented method for processing frames received by a network device from another network device via a network link, comprising:

maintaining a data structure for storing a plurality of Ether Types and an associated tag size for each Ether Type;

detecting an Ether Type of a received frame;

obtaining a tag size for the detected Ether Type from the data structure;

determining if the tag size for a tag in the received frame is less than a programmable size;

inserting one or more blank characters to increase the tag to the programmable size; and

then processing the frame with the tag having the programmable size.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the frame processing module inserts the blank character(s) to increase the tag size to the programmable size.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein the frame is a Fibre Channel over Ethernet frame.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the network device is an adapter.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the programmable tag size is 20 bytes.

6. A machine implemented method for processing frames received by a network device from another network device via a network link, comprising:

maintaining a data structure to determine a tag size of a tag received in a frame header of a frame received by the network device, wherein the data structure stores a plurality of Ether Types and an associated tag size for each Ether Type;

detecting an Ether Type of a received frame;

obtaining a tag size for the detected Ether Type from the data structure;

determining if the tag size is less than a fixed programmable size;

inserting a blank character to increase the tag size to the programmable size; and

processing the frame with the tag having the programmable size.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein a frame processing module of a network interface module of the network device detects the Ether Type field from the frame header of the received frame and obtains a tag size for the detected Ether Type.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the frame processing module inserts the blank character to increase the tag size to the programmable size.

9. The method of claim 6 , wherein the frame is a Fibre Channel over Ethernet frame.

10. The method of claim 6 , wherein the network device is an adapter.

11. The method of claim 6 , wherein the programmable tag size is 20 bytes.

12. A system, comprising:

a network device having a processor and a memory communicating with another device via a network connection;

wherein the network device is configured to:

maintain a data structure to determine a tag size of a tag received in a frame header of a frame received by the network device, wherein the data structure stores a plurality of Ether Types and an associated tag size for each Ether Type;

detect an Ether Type of a received frame;

obtain a tag size for the detected Ether Type from the data structure;

determine if the tag size is less than a fixed programmable size;

insert a blank character to increase the tag size to the programmable size; and

process the frame with the tag having the programmable size.

13. The system of claim 12 , wherein a frame processing module of a network interface module of the network device detects the Ether Type field from the frame header of the received frame and obtains a tag size for the detected Ether Type from the data structure.

14. The system of claim 13 , wherein the frame processing module inserts the blank character to increase the tag size to the programmable size.

15. The system of claim 12 , wherein the frame is a Fibre Channel over Ethernet frame.

16. The system of claim 12 , wherein the network device is an adapter.

17. The system of claim 12 , wherein the programmable tag size is 20 bytes.

Assignments (6)