Patent ID: 6970454

Claim:
A method comprising: identifying an address portion of a first message in an address slice of a switch, the first message associated with a first priority, the address portion of the first message including a first routing portion specifying a network resource; identifying an address portion of a second message in the address slice, the second message associated with a second priority, the address portion of the second message including a second routing portion specifying the same network resource; identifying a non-address portion of the first message in a non-address slice of the switch; identifying a non-address portion of the second message in the non-address slice, wherein neither of the non-address portions includes a routing portion specifying the network resource; selecting, independently in each slice, the same one of either the first message or the second message as a selected message, based on the first and second priorities; transferring the address portion of the selected message to the network resource specified by the routing portion of the address portion of the selected message; sending the routing portion of the address portion of the selected message from the address slice to the non-address slice; and transferring the non-address portion of the selected message to the network resource specified by the routing portion of the address portion of the selected message.