Patent ID: 8170028

Claim:
A method performed by a network device, the method comprising: receiving, by the network device, data units associated with a plurality of data streams; distributing, by the network device, the data units to a plurality of processing paths; processing, by the network device, the data units at particular ones of the plurality of processing paths, where the processing associated with a particular one of the data units includes a particular number of memory references; transmitting, by the network device, a request, for output sequence information, from a lookup engine of a first processing path, of the plurality of processing paths, associated with the particular one of the data units; receiving, by the network device and in response to the transmitted request, the output sequence information; and re-ordering, by the network device, the particular one of the data units based on the particular number of memory references associated with the particular one of the data units and the output sequence information.