A method and system for a network node for attachment to switch fabrics is described. The system includes an access unit to provide access to communications from an external network, a classification element to label received packets with information identifying an associated flow and queue, a mapping element to place the packets into one of a plurality of queues based on the label identifiers, a scheduler to schedule packets in the queues for transmission, and an encapsulation element to encapsulate the scheduled packets into uniform size frames. The uniform size frames may then be transmitted to a next destination through a switch fabric.