Stephen Lee Degroote

US Patent:

20050190787, Sep 1, 2005

Filed:

Apr 29, 2004

Appl. No.:

10/836368

Inventors:

Timothy Kuik - Lino Lakes MN, US
David Thompson - Rogers MN, US
Stephen DeGroote - Maple Grove MN, US
Murali Basavaiah - Sunnyvale CA, US
Anand Parthasarathy - Sunnyvale CA, US

Assignee:

Cisco Technology, Inc. - San Jose CA

International Classification:

H04J003/16

US Classification:

370466000, 370428000

Abstract:

The present invention defines a new protocol for communicating with an offload engine that provides Transmission Control Protocol (“TCP”) termination over a Fibre Channel (“FC”) fabric. The offload engine terminates all protocols up to and including TCP and performs the processing associated with those layers. The offload protocol guarantees delivery and is encapsulated within FCP-formatted frames. Thus, the TCP streams are reliably passed to the host. Additionally, using this scheme, the offload engine can provide parsing of the TCP stream to further assist the host. The present invention also provides network devices (and components thereof) that are configured to perform the foregoing methods. The invention further defines how network attached storage (“NAS”) protocol data units (“PDUs”) are parsed and delivered.