Patent ID: 8085778

Claim:
A network device comprising: a plurality of ports configured to transmit and receive packets of data; a memory configured to store a routing table; a forwarding engine configured to transfer the packets of data between the plurality of ports based on the routing table; and a processor configured to adaptively select a group of the plurality of ports, wherein the group of the plurality of ports includes more than one of the plurality of ports and fewer than all of the plurality of ports, define a routing interface that aggregates the group of the plurality of ports into a dedicated routed trunk from the network device to a second network device, disable layer-2 link aggregation for each port of the group of the plurality of ports, assign a single media access control (MAC) address to the routing interface, and modify the routing table to direct each data flow having the single MAC address as a destination address to the second network device via a respective port of the routing interface.