Abstract: Traffic between a first device and a second device across a plurality of communication lanes of a communication link is stalled. A first device side of the communication lane is powered-down on at least one of the plurality of communication lanes to deactivate the at least one communication lane. A power-down request is sent from the first device to the second device to power-down a second device-side of the at least one communication lane. Traffic between the first device and the second device is restarted over the active communication lanes.

Abstract: Techniques are provided to allow for efficient data packing under certain coding schemes, e.g., when an enhanced 64/66 encoding scheme is employed. The traditional 64/66 encoding scheme uses idle bytes to pad packets to obtain a packet of fixed size, thereby adding idle overhead to transmitted packets. Accordingly, the techniques eliminate padding bytes and provide for receiving packets by way of a first data link at forwarding device. The packets are transmitted using a scheme that pads the packets to achieve a predetermined packet length. The padding is removed from the received packets to obtain unpadded packets. Data segments of the unpadded packets are concatenated for forwarding in a continuous data stream with a packet delimiter separating each of the unpadded packets. The continuous data stream is encoded using enhanced physical coding sub layer for forwarding over a second data link.

Abstract: A number of ports are configured in a linecard in a network device as dedicated ports and a remaining number of ports as shared ports. A total bandwidth allocated to the dedicated ports is computed. It is determined that available bandwidth at a central crossbar is greater than the total bandwidth allocated to the dedicated ports. The total data sent the central crossbar is rate limited to less than the available bandwidth at the central crossbar. First data associated with the dedicated ports is scheduled to the central crossbar using a first priority. Second data associated with the shared ports is scheduled using a second priority. A shared port data is scheduled based on a ration of a bandwidth requirement for the shared port as a fraction of overall bandwidth requirement for the shared ports.

Abstract: A number of ports are configured in a linecard in a network device as dedicated ports and a remaining number of ports as shared ports. A total bandwidth allocated to the dedicated ports is computed. It is determined that available bandwidth at a central crossbar is greater than the total bandwidth allocated to the dedicated ports. The total data sent the central crossbar is rate limited to less than the available bandwidth at the central crossbar. First data associated with the dedicated ports is scheduled to the central crossbar using a first priority. Second data associated with the shared ports is scheduled using a second priority. A shared port data is scheduled based on a ration of a bandwidth requirement for the shared port as a fraction of overall bandwidth requirement for the shared ports.