Patent ID: 7684336

Claim:
A network device, comprising: one or more processors configured to transmit a media stream to one or more different neighboring nodes over different associated links, the one or more processors first detecting different operating speeds of the different links and then determining different rates for transmitting the media stream to the different neighbor nodes according to the different detected link operating speeds; and a packet queue that receives media packets, the one or more processors: sending the media packets from the packet queue to a hardware interface according to the transmission rates determined for transmitting the media stream by calculating a budgeted amount of data for sending from the packet queue to the hardware interface for a predetermined time window; moving into an idle mode for the predetermined time window when the packet queue is empty; and sending packets from the packet queue to the hardware interface during the time window when the packet queue contains packets and until the budgeted amount of data has been exceeded; and moving into the idle mode for the time window when the budgeted amount of data sent from the packet queue to the hardware interface has been exceeded.