Patent ID: 7826455

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a packet at a network processor of a network element; determining if the packet is to be directed to a control processor configured to allow a single IP address to be associated with the network element, or to one of a plurality of traffic processors configured to handle network traffic; upon determining that the packet is to be directed to the control processor, distributing the packet to the control processor; and upon determining that the packet is to be directed to one the plurality of traffic processors: determining whether the packet was received from a subscriber network or a different network that is not a subscriber network; performing a hashing operation on the source address if the packet was received from the subscriber network and performing the hashing operation on the destination address if the packet was received from the different network, the hashing operation producing a hash value; determining if the packet is to be directed to a particular one of the plurality of traffic processors based on the hash value; and distributing the packet to the particular one of the plurality of traffic processors.