A system and methods of using commodity switches and commodity servers to produce a load-balanced, highly-available network for a computing cloud are disclosed. The system comprises switches and servers. The switches are organized in tiers. The switches in the highest tier are connected to the servers via uplink switch ports. The switches in the lowest tier are connected to devices external to the system via downlink switch ports. A packet received from any downlink switch port is forwarded to one of the at least one link aggregation of uplink switch ports. A packet received from any uplink switch port is forwarded according to the first label in the packet. A server is configured to insert one or more labels in a packet to be sent out via the switches. A value in a label indicates the switch port to be selected to send out the packet received at a switch.