Work queue alias system and method allowing fabric management packets on all ports of a cluster adapter

摘要

A device, method and computer program to receive and identify incoming cell data transmitted to a cluster adapter as a request for acknowledgment from a fabric manager server so that the fabric manager server may configure a computer network. This device, method and computer allows for devices in the network to have many ports simultaneously connected to the network and still be able to receive the same request for acknowledgment on all ports without the request for acknowledgment being overwritten by other requests coming in on different ports on the same device. This is accomplished by using a fabric manager packet alias reception circuit embedded in each port to substitute the destination work queue field having a value of zero for the contents of a fabric management packet alias register located in each port. The device then responds to the request for acknowledgment and a fabric management packet alias transmission circuit then replaces the source work queue field with the value zero so that the fabric manager server will recognize the response as an acknowledgment of the device's presence.