Patent ID: 6687254
Filing Date: 2004-02-03
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A buffering system for use in a digital communications device employing a connection-oriented protocol, said system comprising:a memory for storing messages; a controller connected to the memory for determining whether to store or discard messages based on predetermined discard criteria, and including means for storing messages in the memory, wherein the memory is logically partitioned into plural reserved buffer spaces of predetermined size allocated to predetermined groups of traffic flows and a shared buffer space, said groups of traffic flows being groups of virtual connections, each connection group being associated with a single class of communications traffic, and each virtual connection comprising stream of messages; and wherein the controller is enabled to logically fill each reserved buffer space to a predetermined state of congestion before logically storing messages belonging to the corresponding traffic group in the shared buffer space; wherein each traffic group is associated with a bound on its utilization of the shared buffer space and wherein a shared space congestion is asserted against a given traffic group when its corresponding bound is reached; and wherein connections are provisioned with a maximum connection queue depth limit and wherein said discard criteria includes the event of a given connection reaching an amount of stored messages equal to the corresponding maximum connection queue depth limit.