Patent ID: 8370492

Claim:
A method of providing a quality of service (QoS) in a link layer, the method comprising: receiving, by a stream providing device, minimum resource requirement information and maximum resource requirement information of a stream receiving device; transmitting, by the stream providing device, a reservation message including the minimum and the maximum resource requirement information; allocating a resource, by at least one bridge, based on the reservation message transmitted from the stream providing device; and receiving, by the stream receiving device, a stream transmitted from the stream providing device via the resource, wherein the allocating the resource comprises selecting, by the at least one bridge, to allocate the resource to either a minimum resource requirement corresponding to the minimum resource requirement information provided by the reservation message or a maximum resource requirement corresponding to the maximum resource requirement information provided by the reservation message, during the allocating the resource, the resource is allocated, by the at least one bridge, to the maximum resource requirement when the at least one bridge is able to allocate the resource to the maximum resource requirement and a previous bridge has not allocated the resource to the minimum resource requirement, the resource is allocated, by the at least one bridge, to the minimum resource requirement when the at least one bridge is not able to allocate the resource to the maximum resource requirement or the previous bridge has already allocated the resource to the minimum resource requirement, and wherein each of the at least one bridge allocates the resource to the minimum resource requirement after changing a resource for another stream under service from a maximum resource requirement to a minimum resource requirement and allocating the resource for the other stream if an allocable resource is less than the minimum resource requirement.