Patent ID: 8693470

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a first packet forwarding module, a first stream of packetized data from a first source terminal; receiving, at a second packet forwarding module, a second stream of packetized data from a second source terminal, wherein the packet forwarding module is separate from the first packet forwarding module and is configured identically to the first packet forwarding module; generating data from the received first and second streams of packetized data that identifies egress queues for respective packets thereof; processing respective packets from the first and second streams of packetized data into fully routable packets including a media access control (MAC) address of a next-hop destination in the network, wherein one of the fully routable packets is a control packet; adding a header to each of the fully routable packets, the header comprising information indicative of a destination terminal to which a given packet is to be sent; passing the fully routable packets and the data identifying the egress queues to a single Quality of Service module; processing the control packet through the Quality of Service module and passing the control packet to a route processor module that is configured to provide routing tables to the first and second packet forwarding modules, wherein the processing includes keeping the header on the control packet when the control packet is routed to the route processor module; removing the header from the fully routable packets that are not the control packet in the Quality of Service module; queuing, by the Quality of Service module, the fully routable packets from which the headers have been removed in the egress queues in accordance with the data identifying the egress queues for the respective packets; and providing the queued packets from the Quality of Service module to a network in a priority order of service associated with the respective egress queues.