Abstract: A high-speed, hardware based translation system for translating frames from one frame format to another frame format is disclosed. According to one embodiment, the frame translation system for translating a frame associated with a computer network from a first format to a second format includes a storage buffer for temporarily storing the frame of the first format; and a format translator for retrieving portions of the frame in the first format from said storage buffer, identifying the second format from at least one of the retrieved portions of the frame in the first format, and outputting portions of the frame in the second format. The frame translation system may also include a counter for counting a length of the frame in the first format. The translation system according to the invention can translate frames of incoming data to another format at a rate of greater than 150k frames/seconds.

Abstract: A hub circuit with an integrated bridge circuit carried out in software including a switch for bypassing the bridge process such that the two bridged networks effectively become one network. An in-band management process in software is disclosed which receives and executes network management commands received as data packets from the LANs coupled to the integrated hub/bridge. Also, hardware and software to implement an isolate mode where data packets which would ordinarily be transferred by the bridge process are not transferred except in-band management packets are transferred to the in-band management process regardless of which network from which they arrived. Also disclosed, a packet switching machine having shared high-speed memory with multiple ports, one port coupled to a plurality of LAN controller chips coupled to individual LAN segments and an Ethernet microprocessor that sets up and manages a receive buffer for storing received packets and transferring pointers thereto to a main processor.