Patent ID: 7292589

Claim:
An apparatus for load balancing packets within a network device, said network device having a plurality of network device sub-systems, each said sub-system having at least one network device system port and a plurality of fabric ports, said fabric ports connecting said each sub-system with others of said sub-systems within said network device, said apparatus comprising: a classifier, said classifier configured to associate each of said packets with a flow identifier, said flow identifier indicating a network flow to which each of said packets belongs; a plurality of queues, each of said fabric ports having one of said queues associated therewith, each said queue having a status which includes a queue threshold; a flow history table maintaining the history of flows associated with each said fabric port; and a port selector, said port selector using the flow identifier, the flow history table and said status to forward each of said packets to one of said fabric ports via its associated queue.