Patent ID: 7529186

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a. a plurality of physical ports, each for providing a physical link to a network connection, the physical ports being configurable by control plane processes; b. port services, for operating on packets entering and exiting the physical ports, the port services controlling packet flows, as defined by control plane configurations; c. a control plane, comprising a plurality of control plane processes, the control plane processes for providing high-level control of the ports and the port services; d. wherein: i. a control plane port provides access to the plurality of control plane processes, so that a set of control plane port services can be applied thereto; and ii. the control plane processes are accessible through a common control plane port, such that control plane packets originating at a plurality of physical ports and destined to one of the plurality of control plane processes are first processed through the common control plane port, before being processed by individual control plane processes.