Patent ID: 7535928

Claim:
A method of transmitting data frames to a plurality of output ports, each of the data frames having a destination associated with one of the output ports, the method comprising: at each of a plurality of input ports, partitioning a portion of each data frame to provide one or more ordered data cells having data representative of a sequence number corresponding with the output port associated with the destination of the data frame, the data representative of the sequence number in each data cell indicating an ordinal position of the data cell among the ordered data cells of the data frame; and at each of the output ports, receiving a forwarded data cell for each ordered data cell associated with each data frame having a destination associated with the output port, each forwarded data cell corresponding with an ordered data cell and data frame associated with the ordered data cell, determining an ordinal position of the forwarded data cell among the forwarded data cells associated with the data frame based upon data in the forwarded data cell representative of the sequence number, and indicating ability to accept additional data cells in a following cell interval to a plurality of crossbar sections.