In-band management of a stacked group of switches by a single CPU

1. Field of the Invention A switching system includes switches, each having a host processing unit and a switching unit, and a backbone link configured for transferring data packets between the switching units. One of the host processing units is configured as a master unit for generating a data frame having a destination address for a selected one of the switching units of a corresponding selected one of the other host processing units. The master unit outputs the data frame to the corresponding switching unit for transfer to the selected one switching unit via the backbone link. The selected one switching unit, in response to receiving the data frame having the corresponding destination address, forwards the data frame to the corresponding host processing unit for execution of a processing operation specified in the data frame. Hence, the switching system provides inter-processor communications using a preexisting backbone link, eliminating the necessity of a processor bus.