Patent ID: 9559968
Date: 2017-01-31
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04L

Claim:
1. A method comprising: maintaining at a network element a flow table, wherein the flow table comprises a plurality of flow table entries and wherein each of the flow table entries corresponds to one of a plurality of active data flows in a network; subsequent to receipt at the network element of a data packet of one of the active flows, characterizing the one of the active flows as a large flow or a short flow using values contained in the flow table entry corresponding to the one of the active flows; and processing the received packet in accordance with the characterization, wherein the processing the received packet in accordance with the characterization comprises, if the one of the flows is characterized as a large flow, pacing transmission of packets of the one of the flows using a token bucket to control a rate at which packets of the one of the flows are transmitted, wherein packets awaiting transmission are queued in a buffer.