Patent ID: 8149698

Claim:
A scheduling method for use by a switch that interconnects networks, comprising: identifying, by the switch, a plurality of active events to be processed by a processor in the switch, wherein at least some of the active events involve encoding bearer traffic using a specified encoding rate; generating an initial schedule tailored to the plurality of active events, wherein generating the initial schedule comprises: identifying target delivery times for the active events, determining activation times for the active events based on the identified target delivery times, determining, based on the activation times and target delivery times, whether overlap of processing of the active events will occur, and in response to determining that overlap of processing of the active events will occur, shifting the activation time of at least one of the active events to avoid the overlap in the initial schedule; and shifting each of the active events earlier by a common predefined time margin to form an updated schedule such that the activation times in the updated schedule for the corresponding active events are earlier than corresponding activation times in the initial schedule by the common predefined time margin to accommodate for the possibility of occurrence of an un-scheduled control event after generation of the initial schedule, wherein shifting by the common predefined time margin is performed prior to occurrence of the un-scheduled control event, wherein the un-scheduled control event comprises a request to change the specified encoding rate, and wherein the request to change the specified encoding rate is received after the initial schedule is generated.