Patent ID: 7430167
Filing Date: 2008-09-30
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method in an ingress port-adapter (IA) for dynamically evaluating the relative level of occupancy of the individual switching planes of a parallel packet switch, wherein a request is transmitted from said IA to one of said individual switching planes each time a data packet is received in said IA, said data packet being temporarily stored in said IA, and wherein an acknowledgment is returned from said one or said individual switching planes to said IA when said data packet can be processed, said method comprising the steps of: computing, for each individual switching plane, the number of data packets waiting to be processed and determining the maximum of the numbers from among all the switching planes and the minimum of the numbers from among all the switching planes; determining a range as a difference between the maximum and the minimum numbers; comparing said range of data packets waiting to be processed with at least one predetermined threshold; and signaling each at least one predetermined threshold exceeded to a control device.