Patent · US Expired

Traffic scheduling system and method for packet-switched networks with fairness and low latency

US6134217A · kind A · utility

147Cited by
24References
33Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateApr 16, 1996
Grant dateOct 17, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 16, 2016

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH04L2012/5681
  • WIPO fieldTelecommunications
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A traffic scheduling system and method are disclosed for providing quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees in a packet-switched communication network where multiple traffic sessions share an outgoing communication link of a network switch in such a way that a certain minimum rate is reserved for each session sharing the link. The method can be applied to both general communication networks supporting variable packet sizes and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks with a fixed packet (cell) size. A packet arriving for transmission on an outgoing link of the switch is assigned a timestamp and placed in a priority queue in the order of increasing timestamps so that the packet with the smallest timestamp is placed at the head of the queue. The timestamp is computed based on a system potential maintained by the system, that tracks the progress of work in the system. The system potential is maintained at zero when no packets are queued at the outgoing link, and increases progressively as packets are transmitted. In addition to the timestamps, a starting potential is also calculated on arrival of each packet, and the starting potentials of queued packets are maintained in a separate prior…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.