Patent ID: 7680043

Claim:
In a network processor receiving inbound data flows that services a plurality of flows including a first flow and a discard flow, a method comprising: indicating in a network processor that the first flow including a first flow queue is to be disabled; appending to a discard queue, a string of frame pointers for the first flow queue corresponding to the first flow to be disabled; and in response to the indicating step, transferring to the discard flow including a discard queue that list frames to be discarded indicated by the string of frame pointers at least one frame included in the first flow queue, and discarding all frames included in the first flow queue as indicated by the string of frame pointers; wherein the discarding step includes enqueuing to the discard queue all frames included in the flow queue that correspond to the first flow, wherein the enqueuing step includes linking to a last frame in the discard queue a first one of the frames included in the flow queue that corresponds to the first flow, and wherein the transferring step includes: transferring to the discard queue all frames included in the first flow queue, and linking a first one of the frames to be transferred to a last one of the frames in the discard queue.