A method and apparatus for prioritizing source Media Access Control (MAC) address miss processing is described. In one embodiment of the invention, a network bridge receives multiple frames (each including a source MAC address) at multiple ports of multiple line cards. If a source MAC address of a received frame is associated with a different port than which it was received on, the network bridge places a source MAC miss message in a high priority MAC move miss queue. If a source MAC address of a received frame is not associated with any of the ports of the network bridge, the network bridge places a source MAC miss message in a low priority unknown MAC miss queue. The network bridge processes those source MAC miss messages in the high priority queue with a higher priority than processing those source MAC miss messages in the low priority queue.