Methods and systems for a network device are provided. The network device includes a stage one arbiter for a base-port having a plurality of sub-ports for determining if there are any pending requests; blocking any other requests from a same receive queue destined for a same sub-port, same transmit queue when there are any pending requests; selecting a group of requests with a highest priority and available resources; selecting highest priority requests; selecting an oldest one of the highest priority requests; sending the selected requests to a stage two arbiter for selecting a request with a highest priority and when there are requests that have a same priority, selecting an oldest request for processing.