Patent ID: 7688816

Claim:
For use in a system having an ingress traffic manager component having a plurality of virtual output queues, and an egress traffic manager component having a plurality of virtual input queues and a plurality of reassembly queues, a method comprising: tracking, for each of the virtual output queues, an available cell count; if the available cell count for a selected non-empty virtual output queue is greater than a predetermined value, sending a cell from the selected non-empty virtual output queue, and updating, in a first way, the available cell count corresponding to the selected non-empty virtual output queue; if a message is received from the egress traffic manager that indicates that an output port corresponding to the selected non-empty virtual output queue has moved in order a cell received out of order by the non-empty virtual input queue from the corresponding virtual input queue to a reassembly queue, updating, in a second way, the available cell count corresponding to the virtual output queue; identifying a link fault; sending a flush packet to the egress traffic manager component that received packets by the link that had a fault; and flushing associated virtual input queues associated with the ingress traffic manager component.