Patent ID: 7623524

Claim:
A scheduling device comprising a plurality of ingress ports to receive data from external sources; a plurality of egress ports to transmit data to external destinations; a plurality of queues to store data waiting to be transmitted, wherein the queues are associated with a particular ingress port and a particular egress port; a request generator to generate requests for permission to transmit data from the queues; a switching matrix to provide selective connectivity between the plurality of ingress ports and the plurality of egress ports; and a scheduler to receive the requests, generate grants based thereon, and configure the switching matrix, wherein said scheduler monitors its efficiency by tracking requests granted and grants accepted for a defined period and if the efficiency is determined to be below a defined threshold said scheduler performs perturbation of its scheduling state, wherein said scheduler considers a scheduling phase inefficient if some predetermined amount of requests sent from sources or some predetermined amount of requests received by destinations are not granted, and wherein said scheduler is considered inefficient if more than a certain percentage of scheduling phases is considered inefficient.