Patent ID: 8306040

Claim:
A method comprising: obtaining a mapping from a graphical user interface, wherein the mapping logically associates a network processing resource with a network interface, and wherein the mapping is represented as a steering table; for each of a plurality of the network packet processing resources of a network routing/switching device, dynamically assigning the network packet processing resource to one or more of a plurality of the network interfaces of the network routing/switching device, each of the plurality of network packet processing resources including one or more processing elements and a memory, wherein said dynamically assigning comprises pushing the steering table from the assigned network packet processing resources to the network interfaces to which they have been assigned; and steering incoming network packets received by the plurality of network interfaces to an appropriate network packet processing resource based on the dynamic assignment by indexing an incoming network packet into the steering table with a channel identifier for the incoming network packet to acquire a unique identifier for the associated network processing resource.