Patent ID: 8249067

Claim:
An apparatus, comprising: a port interface that is arranged and configured to receive a packet from an ingress port; a traffic management module being operatively coupled to the port interface and that is arranged and configured to manage routing of the packet to a destination; and a packet processing engine that is arranged and configured to: perform packet processing on the packet, associate a tag with the packet, wherein the tag includes a packet processing source field to identify an entry point to a fabric, a destination field, and a fabric source field to identify a most recent device to process the packet in the fabric, enable forwarding of the packet through multiple hops within the fabric when devices other than an ingress device process the packet, edit the tag by changing the fabric source field to identify the most recent device to process the packet in the fabric, wherein the packet processing source field remains fixed within the fabric, enable the packet to be processed independent of a fabric topology using the tag, and enable layer 2 learning, source port knockout and layer 2 proxy processing using the packet processing source field and the fabric source field.