Patent ID: 6944174

Claim:
A multiport network device comprising: a plurality of receive ports configured to receive frames in a packet-switched network, the frames each having a source field indicating the source of the frame and a destination field indicating an intended destination for the frame; a plurality of transmit ports configured to transmit the frames in the packet-switched network; a time-stamping component connected to receive the frames from the plurality of receive ports, the time-stamping component appending a time-stamp value to the received frames that correspond to voice transmissions; and output queues corresponding to the transmit ports and connected to receive the frames from the output of the time-stamping component, the output queues forwarding the received frames to appropriate ones of the transmit ports, the output queues expediting the forwarding of the received frames that have appended time-stamp values after a predetermined period of time has elapsed from the time-stamp value, each of the output queues further comprising write side FIFO queues configured to receive the frames from an output of the time-stamping component, read side FIFO queues configured to transmit the frames received by the write side FIFO queue to the transmit port corresponding to the output queue, and a time-stamp control component that expedites the forwarding of the received frames that have the appended time-stamp values after the predetermined period of time has elapsed by controlling writing of the input frames in which the predetermined period of time has elapsed to the read side FIFO queues as soon as space is available in the read side FIFO queues.