Patent ID: 8634335

Claim:
A switching device comprising: an ingress port configured to receive first packets and second packets from a network device, the first packets and the second packets having been transmitted by the network device to the switching device in accordance with a transfer rate; a parsing module configured to separate by layer the first packets into parsed packets, wherein the parsed packets include first control packets and first data packets, and wherein each of the layers of the parsed packets corresponds to a layer one, a layer two, a layer three or a layer four of an open systems interconnection reference model; a rate limitation module configured to receive the parsed packets, and based on the layer of each of the parsed packets, transmit a pause signal from the switching device via the ingress port to the network device to temporarily limit the transfer rate of the second packets from the network device to the switching device; a classification module configured to classify the parsed packets; and a bandwidth tracking module in communication with the classification module, wherein the bandwidth tracking module has a fullness level that indicates a fill level of a bucket, and wherein the rate limitation module is configured to transmit the pause signal based on the fullness level of the bandwidth tracking module.