Methods and apparatus for communicating Fiber Channel frames between a private loop device and an Ethernet link through a Fiber Channel private loop device interconnect system. In the preferred embodiments, the Fiber Channel private loop device interconnect system I a fabric or an intelligent bridging hub. In one aspect of this invention, a Fiber Channel private loop device is storage device which contains JBOSD or RAIDS. Preferably, the interconnect system includes routing filter incoming Arbitrated Loop physical addresses (ALPAs) to determine which Fiber Channel frames must attempt to be routed through the fabric. Numerous topologies of interconnect systems may be achieved.