Patent ID: 8767722

Claim:
A method of switching in a switching network including an upper tier and a lower tier including a plurality of follower switches, wherein each of the plurality of follower switches is a physical switch including an inter-switch port and a plurality of data ports, and wherein all data traffic ingressing the plurality of data ports is switched between the data ports and the inter-switch port in pass-through mode, the method comprising: at a master switch in the upper tier having a plurality of master switch ports each coupled to a respective one of the plurality of follower switches, implementing on each of the plurality of master switch ports a plurality of virtual ports each corresponding to a respective one of the plurality of data ports at the follower switch coupled to that master switch port; queuing data traffic communicated between the master switch and data ports on the plurality of follower switches within virtual ports among the plurality of virtual ports that correspond to the data ports on follower switches with which the data traffic is communicated; the master switch switching data traffic directly between an ingress virtual port on an ingress master switch port among the plurality of master switch ports and an egress virtual port on an egress master switch port among the plurality of master switch ports; the master switch forwarding the data traffic directly from the egress virtual port toward an inter-switch port of a follower switch at the lower tier; and the master switch applying data handling to the data traffic in accordance with a control policy based at least upon the virtual port in which the data traffic is queued, wherein the master switch applies different policies to data traffic queued to two virtual ports on the same one of the plurality of master switch ports.