Patent ID: 8811173

Claim:
A method for queuing data packets for a plurality of mobiles in a communications network at a network element, the method including: establishing a plurality of queues corresponding to each of the plurality of mobiles, respectively; receiving data packets associated with the plurality of mobiles at the network element; assigning each of the received data packets to a corresponding one of the plurality of queues; performing a determination operation on a selected queue to determine whether or not to send one or more packets of the selected queue from the network element, based on a packet size of a head data packet and an adaptive transmission threshold value associated with the selected queue, the selected queue being selected from among the plurality of queues, the selected queue being a queue having at least one data packet, the adaptive transmission threshold value changing based on an amount data sent from the selected queue, the head data packet being an earliest received data packet in the selected queue, wherein the determination operation includes, incrementing the adaptive transmission threshold value by adding a reference value to the adaptive transmission threshold value, the reference value being determined based on at least one of a number of users currently accessing the network element, and an amount free resources available at the network element, comparing a packet size of the head packet in the selected queue to the adaptive transmission threshold value, and performing a processing operation including when the packet size is less than or equal to the adaptive transmission threshold value, sending the head packet, subtracting the size of the head packet from the adaptive transmission threshold value, and performing the comparing step and the processing operation for a packet following the head packet in the selected queue, and when the packet size is greater than the adaptive transmission threshold value, ending the determination operation for the selected queue.