Multicast and unicast scheduling for a network device

A method and apparatus are provided for scheduling unicast and multicast data in an input-queued network device. According to one aspect of the present invention, a combined schedule is created by pipelined staging of multicast and unicast scheduling. Multicast cells are scheduled for transmission among multiple interfaces of a crossbar by performing a multicast cell scheduling cycle for multiple classes of service that are supported by the network device. Then, unicast cells are scheduled for transmission among the interfaces at a lower priority than the previously scheduled multicast cells by performing a unicast cell scheduling cycle for the multiple classes of service using only those interfaces that remain unmatched after completion of the multicast cell scheduling cycle.