Patent ID: 11916782
Assignee: HEWLETT PACKARD ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT LP
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 7:
8. A method comprising:
buffering, in an output buffer associated with an output port of a switch, packets in packet flows to be transmitted via the output port, wherein a respective packet flow includes packets with one or more common header fields and is identified by a flow identifier that is unique within an input port of the switch via which the packet flow is received;
allocating bandwidth of the output port based on a predetermined configuration among the packet flows, wherein the packet flows share the bandwidth of the output port with fairness based on the predetermined configuration;
arbitrating among the packet flows based on the bandwidth allocated to a respective packet flow;
selecting a packet flow based on the arbitration for forwarding a packet from the output buffer;
maintaining state information for the respective packet flow by monitoring acknowledgment packets for packets of the respective packet flow transmitted via the output port, and
deallocating the flow identifier from the respective packet flow in response to receiving an acknowledgement packet for a last transmitted packet of the respective packet flow.