Patent ID: 6785236
Filing Date: 2004-08-31
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A method of transmitting streams of packetized information selectively over channels of an information network, comprising:associating a number of queues with corresponding transmission channels of the network, enqueuing incoming descriptors representing information to be transmitted over a given channel in a queue associated with the given channel, and dequeuing the descriptors from the queues by operation of a scheduler; associating a number of transmit buffers with the channels; defining for each of the transmit buffers a watermark threshold value corresponding to a desired minimum occupancy for the buffer, sensing when the occupancy of a given transmit buffer falls below the threshold value defined for the given buffer, and producing a corresponding watermark event signal identifying the channel associated with the given buffer; providing the watermark event signals to the scheduler, and delivering information represented by descriptors dequeued by the scheduler to corresponding transmit buffers according to the order of the watermark event signals provided to the scheduler; and setting a capacity for each transmit buffer to correspond to two maximum byte sized packets.