Patent ID: 7430208

Claim:
A method comprising: determining a tag type based on a packet, wherein the tag type corresponds to a type of switching to be performed on the packet, the packet is sent from an ingress engine into a switch fabric, and the packet is received from the switch fabric at an egress engine; determining a tag parameter for the packet, wherein a value of the tag parameter is based, in part, upon the tag type; encoding and storing the tag type and the tag parameter in a tag value for the packet, wherein the encoding and storing the tag type and the tag parameter in the tag value comprises relating the tag value to an outgoing virtual circuit (OVC), and the OVC is configured to couple the switch fabric to the egress engine; reading the stored tag value corresponding to the packet; and processing the packet according to the stored tag value, wherein a type of processing is determined from a plurality of processing types using the stored tag value, and the processing the packet according to the stored tag value occurs in the egress engine.