Patent ID: 7154902

Claim:
A method of switching data packets through a router core serving multiple core ingress ports and multiple core egress ports, comprising: queueing data packets at each ingress port in a set of egress queues, each queue in the set assigned to hold data packets having a corresponding core egress port assignment; communicating egress queue status information, for each ingress port, to a central scheduler; creating, based on the communicated egress queue status, a core ingress port-to-core egress port mapping for an upcoming epoch; at the beginning of the epoch, reconfiguring the router core according to the core ingress port-to-core egress port mapping; during the epoch, at each core ingress port that is part of the port mapping, supplying a group of packets to the router core, the group of packets selected from at least one egress queue having the same egress port assignment as that contained in the port mapping for that core ingress port; and for each group of supplied packets for a given epoch, switching that group of packets through the router core as a unit.