Patent ID: 7742416

Claim:
A method, comprising: determining a fair share of an output for one or more inputs that feed the output based on an overall preemption threshold of the output divided by a number of the inputs; determining a rate of unmarked traffic that is received on each of the inputs; determining which inputs have a rate of unmarked traffic that is less than or equal to the fair share for the output (“constrained inputs”); determining which inputs have a rate of unmarked traffic that is greater than the fair share for the output (“unconstrained inputs”); determining remaining available bandwidth for all unconstrained inputs by subtracting a combined rate of unmarked traffic for each constrained input from the overall preemption threshold; determining a fair share use of the output for the unconstrained inputs (“unconstrained fair share”) based on the remaining available bandwidth divided by a number of the remaining unconstrained inputs; and marking, by a node of a computer network that includes the output, unmarked traffic of each unconstrained input at a rate substantially equal to the rate of unmarked traffic greater than the unconstrained fair share.