Patent ID: 6721797
Filing Date: 2004-04-13
Classification: H04L,H04Q

Abstract:
An apparatus for regulating upstream transmission of cells from a customer-side network interface device to a network-side interface device in a passive network, said customer side network interface device adapted to couple with one or more customer network interface cards having rate controllers thereon to reduce a maximum output rate of said interface cards from a peak rate to a controlled peak rate, said apparatus comprising:a priority queue coupled to corresponding network interface cards of said customer-side network interface device for storing therein cells awaiting upstream transmission to said network-side interface device; and a queue status monitor coupled to said priority queue, said status monitor operable to sense when a first threshold in said queue is exceeded, wherein a feedback signal is generated in response to said first threshold being exceeded such that said rate controllers of said network interface cards are activated to limit the maximum output rate thereof to said controlled peak rate, said rate controllers being deactivated when a level in said queue falls below a second threshold such that the maximum output rate of said cards is restored to said peak rate, wherein said first threshold is selected in order to avoid cell loss during transitions between rate control activation and back, wherein the queue holds at least (D*X*Nâˆ’D*W) additional cells beyond said first threshold, where D represents the transition delay, X represents the peak rate, N represents the number of user network interfaces and W represents the assigned upstream bandwidth.