A data communications switch for dynamically distributing packet processing operations between an ingress and egress processor for load balancing is disclosed. The invention in the preferred embodiment features a switching device including a plurality of switching modules, each of the switching modules including a packet classifier for identifying one or more packet processing operations to be applied to an ingress packet and a controller adapted to allocate each of the identified one or more packet processing operations between a first set of packet processing operations and a second set of packet processing operations, execute the first set of packet processing operations at the ingress processor at which the packet was received, and transmit instructions to the egress processor to execute the second set of packet processing operations. The egress processor then executes the second set of packet processing operations, after which the packet may be transmitted toward its destination node.