Patent ID: 8797877

Claim:
A method comprising: determining, by a network device, a change in a drain rate at which network packets are forwarded from a Virtual Output Queue (VOQ) of an ingress forwarding unit of the network device to an egress forwarding unit of the network device, wherein the VOQ comprises a logical queue that corresponds to an output queue of the egress forwarding unit, wherein a size of the VOQ comprises a portion of a logical size of the output queue, wherein the logical size of the output queue is divided among a plurality of VOQs of a plurality of respective ingress forwarding units that includes at least the ingress forwarding unit, wherein the drain rate of the VOQ is based on a respective drain rate for each of the VOQs of the plurality of respective ingress forwarding units that is forwarding network packets to the egress forwarding unit; and in response to determining the change in the drain rate, modifying, at the ingress forwarding unit, the size of the VOQ in direct proportion to the determined change in the drain rate.