Patent ID: 7920564

Claim:
A method of processing packets in a network, the method comprising: assigning, at a network device, a processing priority indicator with each of selected network nodes among a plurality of network nodes, wherein each processing priority indicator indicates a processing priority for packets whose source is the respective network node; receiving a packet at the network device, the packet having a source address and a destination address; determining whether the packet represents control traffic; querying an address database using the source address of the packet and determining a processing priority indicator associated with a source network node which is the source of the packet; determining whether the packet is received from a privileged node based on the processing priority indicator associated with the source network node; modifying one or more attributes associated with the packet if the packet is determined as representing control traffic and as being received from the privileged node; and processing the packet in accordance with the one or more modified attributes, wherein the packet, sourced from the network node with the processing priority indicator higher than a processing priority indicator of a second network node, is processed using a processing priority that is higher than a processing priority for packets sourced from the second network node, the packet being enqueued for further processing prior to transmission to the destination address.