Patent ID: 7266612

Claim:
A method of controlling overload in a packet-based system, comprising: determining a first threshold TH_ 1 corresponding to a guaranteed bandwidth level for a first class of traffic and a second threshold TH_ 2 corresponding to a guaranteed bandwidth level for a second class of traffic, where the first class of traffic has a higher priority than the second class of traffic; computing a number of first class packets in a buffer and a total number of packets in the buffer, the total number of buffered packets including packets of the first class and packets of the second class; and discarding second class packets when a number of buffered second class packets is greater than the second threshold, wherein the second threshold is selected by subtracting a number of packets from a total size of the buffer and the first threshold is selected according to the equation TH_ 1 =ξ 1 *TH_ 2 , where ξ 1 is the guaranteed share of the bandwidth for the first class.