An embodiment of the invention discloses an interchanger stacking
system, a slave unit, a switching
chip and a method for
processing a protocol message. In the scheme, an ENCAP module which is a hardware module in the switching
chip is independently used for packaging a protocol message which is about to be processed by a CPU of main equipment. Compared with a method of packaging the protocol message by forwarding the protocol message to a CPU of a slave unit in the prior art, the method not only consumes shorter time in a packaging process, but also simplifies a forwarding process, only the switching
chip is utilized, the hardware forwarding speed is high, protocol convergence time of the stacking
system is shortened greatly, the protocol
message processing efficiency is improved, and the
packet loss amount in a protocol switching process is reduced. In addition, DCB information, which is up-supplied to a CPU of a main unit, of the protocol message is packaged at one step in a RCPU head, and the information, which is up-supplied to the CPU of the main unit, of the protocol message received from a device is consistent to the information, which is up-supplied to the CPU of a stand-alone interchanger when the interchanger is in a stand-alone state.