Port aggregation load balancing

A network switch, comprising:

• a port group;
• a system for distributing network traffic among ports of the port group, comprising,
• a mechanism for determining a stream ID for a packet and assigning the packet having the stream ID to a queue of a port of the port group, and
• a mechanism for adjusting a queue assignment of a subsequent packet having the stream ID to a queue of a different port of the port group based on load in the queues of the ports of the group, wherein the adjusting mechanism comprises:
• a least utilized queue register for maintaining proper identification of a least utilized queue, and
• a pair of queue mark registers for determining whether a queue for a port of the port group is current, and
• a clock for timing a load balance time interval, wherein said load balance time interval is less than about 1 millisecond in duration.

A computer program product comprising a computer-usable medium having computer-readable program code embodied thereon relating to updating current and alternate time mark registers for a dynamic load balancing of traffic on a port group, the computer program product comprising computer-readable program code for effecting the following steps within a computing system:

• determining whether a load balance time interval has passed;
• where the load balance time interval has passed, determining for each queue of the port group, whether a queue mark indicate bit assigned to packets exiting the queue is equal to a queue mark bit being assigned to packets entering the queue;
• where the queue mark indicate bit is the same as the queue mark bit, clearing all alternate time mark register bits, and toggling all queue mark bits;
• and,
• switching the current and alternate time mark registers.