Patent ID: 8503440

Claim:
A method of scheduling n traffic flows through a multiplexer in F time slots, comprising: a. specifying a first traffic rate vector with n elements for the n traffic flows, wherein each element of the traffic rate vector specifies a number of requested packet transmission opportunities for each of said n traffic flows in a scheduling frame of F time slots; b. using the first traffic vector as an input rate vector to a partitioning routine and F as the number of time slots of a defined scheduling frame length; c. performing said partitioning routine using the input rate vector, said performing comprising decomposing said input vector relatively fairly into K substantially-similar output traffic rate vectors, and wherein the sum of the K output rate vector equals the input rate vector; e. scheduling each of the K output rate vectors, to return a transmission schedule of length 1/K of said defined scheduling frame length; f. concatenating the K schedules computed for the K output rate vectors, to achieve a schedule for the number of time sots of the defined scheduling frame length.