Importance

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Abstract

A technique for controlling the flow of among the ports of a multi-port bridge. The bridge includes a memory for storing packets and a plurality of ports. Each port includes a receive buffer, a transmit buffer and a 'triplet' buffer. A data packet is received by the receive buffer of a port. As the packet is still being received, a look-up table is utilized to identify the appropriate destination port for the packet. A result of the look-up is a 'triplet' which includes three fields: a first field containing the identification of the source port, a second field containing the identification of the destination port, and a third field containing a starting address assigned to the incoming packet in the memory. The triplet is placed upon the communication bus a first time. If the destination port is available to receive the packet directly from the source port, the destination port receives the packet simultaneously as the packet is stored in the memory. Otherwise, the triplet is placed on the communication bus a second time after the packet is stored in the memory. The destination port stores the triplet in its triplet buffer. Then, when the destination port is available, the destination port retrieves the packet from the memory for transmission.

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First Claim