Patent ID: 8248932

Claim:
A method comprising: monitoring a plurality of data flows at an ingress of an electronic switch fabric (ESF) to determine conformance with a respective subscribed bandwidth allocation associated with each data flow of the plurality of data flows; determining at the ingress of the ESF and at an egress of the ESF whether there is excess bandwidth; responsive to determining that there is no excess bandwidth, at the ESF: determining an actual rate of over-subscribing for the at least one data flow by at least: determining a difference between a rate of traffic flow for the at least one data flow and the respective subscribed bandwidth allocation associated with the at least one data flow and determining a ratio between the difference and the rate of traffic flow for the at least one data flow, and restricting one or more data flows of the plurality of data flows from exceeding the respective subscribed bandwidth allocation associated with at least one data flow of the one or more data flows, wherein restricting the one or more data flows comprises dropping attempted excess data in proportion to the actual rate of over-subscribing of the subscribed bandwidth allocation for the at least one data flow; and responsive to determining that there is excess bandwidth at the ESF, permitting each of the one or more data flows to exceed the respective subscribed bandwidth allocation up to an extent of the excess bandwidth.