Patent ID: 8670310

Claim:
A quality-of-service (“QoS”) controller to support QoS flows in a network, the QoS controller comprising: a performance module to estimate performance metrics for an incoming QoS flow associated with a set of QoS requirements and with a network path having a plurality of network switches, the performance metrics including a delay experienced by the incoming QoS flow in at least one of the plurality of network switches in the network path; and a queue assignment module to assign priority queue levels to the incoming QoS flow in at least one of the plurality of network switches in the network path based on the performance metrics of the incoming QoS flow and to adjust the priority queue levels to distribute the QoS flows over multiple priority queue levels in at least one of the plurality of network switches in the network path, wherein to adjust the priority queue levels, the queue assignment module is to compute a delay margin for the incoming QoS flow, the delay margin comprising a difference between the delay experienced by the incoming QoS flow in the at least one of the plurality of network switches in the network path and an expected end-to-end delay for the incoming QoS flow in the network path.