Patent ID: 7197044

Claim:
A method for managing congestion in a network switch, said method comprising the steps of: receiving an incoming packet on a first port of a network switch for transmission to a destination port, wherein said network switch is one of a plurality of network switches configured in a stack; determining if said destination port is a monitored port; determining a queue status of said destination port, if said destination port is determined to be a monitored port; and prescheduling transmission of said incoming packet to said destination port if said destination port is determined to be a monitored port; wherein the step of prescheduling transmission comprises dropping said incoming data packet only when the queue status of the destination port indicates that a queue for the destination port is full, and wherein the network switches in the stack are connected through high performance interconnect links and the method further comprises stripping a module header from packets received via the high performance interconnect links, wherein the module header includes at least one of a field that identifies a trunk group identifier of the first port or bitmap that sends a packet to a mirror-to port located on a remote module.