Patent ID: 7680039

Claim:
A method in a packet-switched network, including: marking, within a network switch, a first packet with a congestion indicator (CI) at a point of congestion receiving and inspecting the first packet marked with the CI within the network switch at a point downstream from the point of congestion; performing, within the network switch, a load-balancing operation among a plurality of physical links upstream from a point of congestion to alleviate the congestion upon receipt of the CI, the load-balancing comprising remapping a conversation from a first physical link to a second physical link and the plurality of physical links couple an ingress line card to a switch component within a switching fabric in the network switch; inserting a remote congestion indicator (RCI) into a second packet bound for the ingress line card; and applying an integration filter to the RCI to determine relative congestion among a plurality of congested queues.