| US 7,512,123 B1 | ||
| Fibre channel fabric and switches with flexible prefix addressing | ||
| Claudio DeSanti, San Jose, Calif. (US); Silvano Gai, San Jose, Calif. (US); Dante Malagrino, Mountain View, Calif. (US); and Dinesh G. Dutt, Sunnyvale, Calif. (US) | ||
| Assigned to Cisco Technology, Inc., San Jose, Calif. (US) | ||
| Filed on Feb. 13, 2004, as Appl. No. 10/778,672. | ||
| Claims priority of provisional application 60/488116, filed on Jul. 16, 2003. | ||
| Int. Cl. H04L 12/28 (2006.01) | ||
| U.S. Cl. 370—389 [370/401; 370/470] | 20 Claims |
| 1. An apparatus comprising,
a Switch configured to be a switching component in a switching Fabric, the Switch being configured to be addressed within
the switching Fabric by an address within an address space of a predefined number of bits, wherein the address space of the
predefined number of bits includes:
a configurable number of host bits sufficient to address the end devices coupled to the Switch; and
a configurable number of prefix bits used to identify the Switch in the switching Fabric, wherein a sum of the configurable
number of host bits and the configurable number of prefix bits is equal to the predefined number of bits, wherein the predefined
number of bits is dynamically allocated such that the configurable number of host bits and the configurable number of prefix
bits are established.
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