Switching apparatus and method based on virtual interfaces

A network device comprises a plurality of physical ports and a packet processing pipeline. The packet processing pipeline is configured to assign a virtual port from a plurality of virtual ports to a packet received via one of the physical ports, wherein a quantity of the virtual ports is larger than a quantity of the physical ports, and wherein, for each of at least some of the physical ports, multiple virtual ports correspond to one physical port. The packet processing pipeline is also configured to assign a virtual domain from a plurality of virtual domains to the packet based on the assigned virtual port, and process the packet based on one or more of i) the assigned virtual port, ii) the assigned virtual domain, and iii) a header field of the packet, including determining zero, one, or more physical ports to which the packet is to be forwarded.