A network device includes a plurality of physical ports configured to be coupled to one or more networks, and a processor device configured to process packets. The processor device includes a processor configured to implement a logical port assignment mechanism to assign source logical port information to a data packet received via a source physical port of the plurality of physical ports. The source logical port information is assigned based on one or more characteristics of the data packet, and the source logical port information corresponds to a logical entity that is different from any physical port. The processor device also includes a forwarding engine processor configured to determine one or more egress logical ports for forwarding the data packet, map the egress logical port(s) to respective egress physical port(s) of the plurality of physical ports, and forward the data packet to the egress physical port(s) based on the mapping.