Flow control using rules queue monitoring in a network switching system
US6636523B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Jan 27, 1999 |
| Grant date | Oct 21, 2003 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 27, 2019 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04L49/352
- WIPO fieldDigital communication
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A novel method of flow control in a multiport data switching system having a decision making engine for controlling data forwarding between receive ports and at least one transmit port. Data blocks representing received data packets are placed in a plurality of data queues to be processed by the decision making engine. The data queues allocated to the receive ports are monitored to produce a flow control threshold signal for a selected data queue to indicate a heavy traffic condition of a receive port corresponding to the selected data queue. For example, the flow control threshold signal may indicate that the receive port is close to an overflow condition. Monitoring of a selected data queue may be performed by comparing a write pointer indicating a memory location for writing the data blocks into the selected data queue with a read pointer indicating a memory location for reading the data blocks from the selected data queue. The flow control threshold signal is produced when a predetermined number of memory entries in the data queue is occupied.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.