Flexible PIC Concentrators house PICs and connect them to the rest of the PFE. FPCs parse, prioritize, and queue the packets before forwarding them across the midplane to the appropriate destination interface. On egress, FPCs prioritize, queue, re-assemble, and forward packets out through the appropriate port. Up to four PICs can be mixed and matched within a single FPC slot, increasing configuration flexibility and network scalability, while maximizing POP efficiency.