Patent ID: 7796508
Filing Date: 2010-09-14
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method for managing congestion and avoidance behavior of network processors, the method comprising: providing for controlling network traffic by a plurality of network processors, a first of the plurality of network processors being of a different model or version from a second of the plurality of network processors; providing for a congestion control application being network processor independent such that the congestion control application need not have specific knowledge of a network processor's hardware, software, or firmware in order to manage the network processor's congestion and avoidance behavior; managing congestion and avoidance behavior of the plurality of network processors by a host processor having the congestion control application; and, providing for a plurality of application programming interfaces (APIs), each of the plurality of APIs being usable by the congestion control application of the host processor, via a multi-word header of a plurality of words, to manage the congestion and avoidance behavior of any of the plurality of network processors, none of the plurality of APIs being limited for use with a specific network processor model or version, and using the multi-word header usable for congestion control, wherein the multi-word header is comprised of a plurality of words where a first part of the multi-word header consisting of a first plurality of words is common to a set of congestion control software located on the plurality of network processors and a second part of the multi-word header consisting of a second plurality of words is common to a plurality of congestion algorithms.