The present invention provides systems and methods for supporting native TDM and native Packet switching simultaneously in a meshed switching architecture. Specifically with the present invention, the meshed links are common to both TDM and packet traffic, and both types terminate to a common system interface without the need to separate physical resources and infrastructure; the common termination function has access to both the TDM (Time Slot Interchange (TSI)) switching and packet switching elements. Native TDM switching and packet switching operate in concurrently in the mesh over common links, with the personality of the links derived by the card type (attached to the mesh). In this, a given card or slot in a system can communicate in the native format to both packet based cards (slots) or TDM based cards (slots) simultaneously with no preconceived restrictions or limitations on slot or link definition.