METHOD AND SWITCH FOR BROADCASTING PACKETS

A switch for broadcasting packets is provided including a plurality of input ports, a switch fabric coupled to the input ports, a plurality of output ports couple d to the suited fabrics and a multicast interconnect coupled between the input ports and output ports for routing multicast packets directly between the input and output ports. The multicast interconnect may include a multicast queue, an arbiter coupled between the multicast queue and the input ports and a plurality of broadcast buffers coupled to the multicast queue, each broadcast buffer coupled to a corresponding output por t. The multicast interconnect may include a plurality of egress arbiters coupled between corresponding broadcast buffers and output ports.