The invention provides a system and system for sharing packet traffic load among a plurality of possible paths. Each packet is associated with a flow, and a hash value is determined for each flow, so as to distribute the sequence of packets into a set of hash buckets. The hash value has a relatively large number of bits, but is divided by the number of possible paths so as to achieve a relatively small modulus value; the modulus value is used to index into a relatively small table associating one selected path with each entry. The modulus value is determined by a relatively small amount of circuitry, simultaneously for a plurality of moduli, and one such modulus value is selected in response to the number of possible paths.