A system and method for speculative forwarding of packets received by a router, wherein each packet includes phits and wherein one or more phits include a cyclic redundancy code (CRC). A packet is received and phits of the packet are forwarded to router logic. A cyclic redundancy code for the packet is calculated and compared to the packet's cyclic redundancy code. An error is generated if the cyclic redundancy codes don't match. If the cyclic redundancy codes don't match, a phit of the packet is modified to reflect the error, the CRC is corrected and the corrected CRC is forwarded to the router logic along with the phit reflecting the CRC error. At the router logic, a check is made to see if the packet is still within the router logic. If the packet is still within the router logic and there was a CRC error, the packet is discarded. If, however, the packet is no longer within the router logic and there was a CRC error, the packet is modified so that the next router discards the packet.