Patent ID: 8593960

Claim:
A method comprising: determining, in an input port register of a node, whether incoming information received in the input port register is a valid incoming packet; after determining receipt of the valid incoming packet, determining whether the packet received in the node is destined for an agent associated with the node and if so, providing the packet to an egress queue of the node to enable the packet to be provided to the agent associated with the node; if the received packet is destined for the agent, determining whether one or more packets are present in an ingress queue of the node and if so and the one or more packets present in the ingress queue match a global schedule, providing a selected one of the one or more packets from the ingress queue to a first output port or a second output port of the node according to the global schedule to indicate a direction of output from the node, the global schedule independent of traffic flow; and otherwise providing the received packet to the first output port or the second output port according to the global schedule.