Patent ID: 8638802

Claim:
A method comprising: storing, within a memory of each of a plurality of network interfaces of a networking routing/switching device, a dynamically configurable steering table representing a mapping that logically assigns each of the plurality of network interfaces to a packet processing resource of a plurality of packet processing resources of the network routing/switching device, wherein for each of the plurality of network interfaces, the steering table has contained therein information indicative of a unique identifier/address of the assigned packet processing resource of the plurality of packet processing resources; responsive to receiving a packet on a particular network interface of the plurality of network interfaces, performing Layer 1 or Layer 2 steering of the received packet to the assigned packet processing resource by which the received packet is to be processed by retrieving the information indicative of the unique identifier/address of the assigned packet processing resource from the dynamically configurable steering table based on a channel identifier associated with the received packet; and processing the received packet by the assigned packet processing resource.