Dell Products Inc.

T Bryan Varble

Kevin Allen Hughes

Jason Garth Pearce

Jeffrey S Kirk

An Ethernet switch includes an Ethernet processing system. Layer two (L2) forwarding tables are provided with the Ethernet processing system, and a memory system is coupled to the Ethernet processing system and includes Ethernet processing system software. A control subsystem establishes communication with the Ethernet processing system and modifies the L2 forwarding tables by removing default Ethernet entries, adding Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) formatted FC well know addresses (WKAs), and setting the one or more L2 forwarding tables to remain persistent. The control subsystem also instructs the Ethernet processing system to forward FC control frames to the control subsystem, and replaces first link state instructions in the Ethernet processing system software with second link state instructions to change Ethernet behavior to FC behavior. The control subsystem may then process FC information in received FCoE format Ethernet frames.

Fibre channel gateway system

An information handling system (IHS) network includes a server IHS and a Fiber Channel (FC) switch IHS that are each directly connected a FC gateway. The FC gateway is configured to establish communication with the FC switch IHS. The FC gateway then receives one of an FCoE Initialization Protocol (FIP) fabric login message and a FIP fabric discovery message from the server IHS and, in response, provides a FCoE fabric discovery message and converts the FCoE fabric discovery message to an FC fabric discovery message that is provided to the FC switch IHS. The FC gateway also receive a FC fabric discovery accept message from the FC switch IHS, converts the FC fabric discovery accept message to an FCoE fabric discovery accept message, and provides one of a FIP fabric login accept message and a FIP fabric discovery accept message to the server IHS.

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Round Rock, TX, United States of America

T Bryan Varble