Method and apparatus for flexible and efficient analytics in a network switch

A method of a network switch comprising:

• directing output data of a memory bypass module of an analytics bank to one of a counter processing unit, a policing processing unit or a sampling processing unit of the analytics bank;
• and
• switching the analytics bank from one of counting with the counter processing unit, policing with the policing processing unit and sampling with the sampling processing unit to another of the counting with the counter processing unit, the policing with the policing processing unit and the sampling with the sampling processing unit by switching where the output data of the memory bypass module is directed from the one of the counter processing unit, the policing processing unit or the sampling processing unit to a different one of the counter processing unit, the policing processing unit and the sampling processing unit.