Patent ID: 7023857

Claim:
A method of regulating traffic in a communications network comprising the steps of: aggregating one or more component traffic flows into a component traffic stream; aggregating a plurality of component traffic streams into an aggregate stream, wherein the plurality of component traffic streams comprises a Guaranteed Bandwidth Traffic Stream and a Best Effort Traffic Stream; carrying the aggregate stream in a single, FIFO queue; and generating selective backpressure on selected ones of the component traffic streams such that selected ones of the component streams are desirably regulated, wherein said generating selective backpressure comprises: asserting a first backpressure signal towards the Guaranteed Bandwidth Traffic Stream and the Best Effort Traffic Stream; and asserting a second backpressure signal towards the Best Effort Traffic Stream; said selective backpressure being generated in response to respective credit counters associated with said selected ones of the component traffic streams reaching a threshold level.