Patent ID: 7623456

Claim:
A system comprising: a switching medium; a plurality of line cards coupled to said switching medium; a first scheduler associated with an ingress line card of said plurality of line cards; a second scheduler associated with an egress line card of said plurality of line cards and communicatively coupled with said first scheduler; and status logic within said egress line card of said plurality of line cards, wherein said second scheduler is communicatively coupled with said first scheduler utilizing said status logic, said ingress line card comprises a first data structure, said first data structure comprises a virtual output queue, said egress line card comprises a second data structure, said second data structure comprises a first virtual input queue and a second virtual input queue, said status logic comprises status logic configured to transfer status information from said egress line card to said ingress line card, said status information comprises status information associated with said first virtual input queue, and said status information comprises status information associated with said second virtual input queue.