Patent ID: 8798080

Claim:
A method of switching in a switching network including an upper tier and a lower tier including a plurality of physical lower tier switches, the method comprising: at a physical master switch in the upper tier having a plurality of physical master switch ports each coupled to an inter-switch port of a respective one of the plurality of lower tier switches, implementing on each of the plurality of physical master switch ports a plurality of virtual ports each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of remote physical interfaces (RPIs) at the lower tier switch coupled to that physical master switch port, wherein the plurality of RPIs are data ports that source data traffic to the master switch via the inter-switch port; in response to receipt of data traffic from a particular lower tier switch among the plurality of lower tier switches at an ingress port among the plurality of physical master switch ports of the master switch, queuing the data traffic to the virtual port on the ingress port that corresponds to the RPI on the particular lower tier switch that was the source of the data traffic; and switching the data traffic from the virtual port on the ingress port to an egress port among the plurality of physical master switch ports and forwarding the data traffic from the egress port.