The present invention is directed towards forwarding network packets in a cluster network. A predetermined identifier may be inserted into a Media Access Control (MAC) ID field of an Ethernet header of a packet to distinguish various types of traffic. Newly received packets may be identified due to the absence of the identifier. The identifier may be added to the source MAC ID field of the Ethernet header of the packet, and the packet may be distributed to cluster nodes for processing via an inter-node communication bus. Thus, received packets with the identifier in the source MAC ID field may be identified as steered for processing by an internal node of the cluster. After processing the packet, the internal node may transmit the processed packets via the inter-node bus with a destination MAC ID including the identifier.