Described is a node comprising a switch fabric and first and second ingress modules. The first ingress module receives a first stream of packets from a first physical path through the network; forwards a copy of the first stream of packets to an intermodule communication channel; selects packets from the first stream of packets and a copy of a second stream of packets for forwarding to the switch fabric. The second ingress module receives the second stream of packets from a second physical path through the network; forwards the copy of the second stream of packets to the intermodule communication channel; and selects packets from the copy of the first stream of packets and the second stream of packets for forwarding to the switch fabric based on sequence numbers in the packets.