US Patent 7904584 Source identifier-based trunking for systems of network devices

A method of handling frames in a network device is disclosed. The steps include receiving a frame by a network device of an assembly of network devices, with the assembly of devices divided into a first side and a second side and the network device being on the first side, examining the received frame to determine whether the frame is destined for a member of a specific trunking group, determining whether a destination device identifier for the frame corresponds to one of the network devices on the second side and forwarding the frame to a destination port based on the specific trunk group membership and the destination device identifier.