Patent ID: 8310927

Claim:
A network device comprising: a first control plane processor configured to process a plurality of control packets that are i) generated by a second control plane processor separate from the first control plane processor, and ii) addressed to the first control plane processor; and a first forwarding engine provided separately from the first control plane processor and configured to forward the plurality of control packets to the first control plane processor in a prioritized order, the first forwarding engine comprising a plurality of first ports to receive the plurality of control packets, each control packet comprising a priority code inserted into an unused header field thereof and representing one of M priorities, N queues each associated with one or more of the M priorities, a decoder coupled to the plurality of first ports and the N queues, wherein the decoder is configured to enqueue a received control packet to one of the N queues based on a decoding of the priority code in the received control packet and a mapping between the N queues and the M priorities, wherein the decoding of the priority code in the received control packet provides sufficient information for selecting an appropriate one of the N queues for enqueuing the received control packet according to the mapping, and a scheduler to pass the control packets from the N queues to the first control plane processor according to a priority scheme for the N queues.