Method and apparatus for managing traffic of a switch include logically partitioning a physical port of the switch into a plurality of virtual ports. One or more virtual output queues are uniquely associated with each virtual port. Switching resources of the switch are assigned to each of the virtual ports. A source virtual port is derived from a frame arriving at the physical port. The frame is placed in a given one of the one or more virtual output queues uniquely associated with the source virtual port derived from the frame. A destination virtual port for the frame is determined. The frame is transferred from the virtual output queue in which the frame is placed to an egress queue associated with the destination virtual port and forwarded from the egress queue to a destination physical port of the switch.