Patent ID: 7751421

Claim:
A data communications switching device for performing traffic generation in a data communications network comprising equipment under test (EUT), the switching device comprising: at least one port configured to receive a first plurality of protocol data units (PDUs); a routing engine configured to execute forwarding operations on the first plurality of PDUs; a traffic generator configured to produce a second plurality of PDUs; and a plurality of priority queues; wherein the switching device is configured to: enqueue the first plurality of PDUs and second plurality of PDUs in the plurality of priority queues, selectively associate the second plurality of PDUs using at least one linked list; repeatedly dequeue the second plurality of PDUs from the plurality of priority queues using the at least one linked list, wherein the switching device further includes a scheduler configured to dequeue the first plurality of PDUs and second plurality of PDUs dequeued from the plurality of priority queues, wherein the scheduler dequeues the first plurality of PDUs and second plurality of PDUs using a bandwidth allocation scheme selected from the group consisting of: strict priority, round robin, and weighted fair queuing, wherein the rate at which the second plurality of PDUs are transmitted from data communications switching device is programmable, and disassociating the first plurality of PDUs from the first set of pointers; and a traffic monitor configured to receive the second plurality of PDUs from EUT and compile traffic generation statistics that are usable by the switching device if the switching device evaluates the forwarding operability of the EUT.