Patent ID: 7551616

Claim:
A method performed by an ingress card of a switch, comprising: receiving a packet comprising a destination identifier; determining if the destination identifier has been previously learned; if the destination identifier has been previously learned: determining an aggregated link associated with the destination identifier, the aggregated link comprising a plurality of egress ports, each egress port associated with an egress card of the switch, the switch comprising a plurality of egress cards; determining a destination port from the egress ports of the aggregated link; and communicating the packet to the destination port; and if the destination identifier has not been previously learned, flooding the packet to all egress cards of the switch, wherein such flooding comprises: determining an aggregated link associated with the destination identifier, the aggregated link comprising a plurality of egress ports; determining whether the aggregated link is isolated such that the aggregated link does not have any egress ports associated with the same egress card as an egress port of a non-aggregated link; and communicating the packet to each egress card having an egress port included in the aggregated link except for the egress cards having an egress port associated with a non-aggregated link.