Patent ID: 7675926

Claim:
A hierarchical traffic management system comprising at least one traffic management node comprising: a classifier operable to identify and classify incoming traffic streams; and a queuing system comprising a plurality of queues and operable to apply scheduling policies to said traffic streams, said plurality of queues of the queuing system each comprising: enqueue attributes configured to control a depth of the queue; and dequeue attributes configured to control scheduling of the queue, said dequeue attributes comprising minimum bandwidth, maximum bandwidth, excess bandwidth, and priority, wherein each of said plurality of queues has one or more of said dequeue attributes defined; wherein said plurality of queues define a queue hierarchy, each layer of said queue hierarchy configured to support one or more priority queues and comprising one or more of said queues configured for said minimum bandwidth attribute and one or more of said queues configured for said excess bandwidth attribute; wherein a first of said plurality of queues comprises a propagated attribute that propagates through said hierarchy from said first queue to a root queue, wherein said propagated attribute applies to said first queue and parent queues of said first queue with respect to traffic associated with said first queue, said priority propagated attribute comprising a priority propagation attribute which specifies whether or not priority service at a queue is propagated through a hierarchy of the queue; and wherein a burst tolerance parameter is associated with a stream enabled with priority propagation, the burst tolerance parameter provided for each layer of hierarchy through which priority behavior propagates.