Patent ID: 7426575

Claim:
A computer implemented method, comprising: admitting an arriving cell of a first flow into an ingress buffer of a network element when a flow occupancy level associated with the first flow in the ingress buffer is less than a flow minimum threshold associated with the first flow, the ingress buffer storing a plurality of classes of network traffic, each class having a plurality of flows, and each class having specific per-class thresholds and each flow having specific per-flow thresholds, wherein at least one per-flow threshold is different than at least one per-class threshold; when the flow occupancy level is not less than the flow minimum threshold, applying a drop probability based on per-class thresholds to determine whether the arriving cell should be dropped, wherein a drop probability of the arriving cell is determined based on per-class thresholds corresponding to a class associated with the first flow; when the arriving cell is not rejected after applying the drop probability based on the per-class thresholds, applying a drop probability based on per-flow thresholds associated with the first flow to determined whether the arriving cell should be dropped; admitting the arriving cell if the arriving cell is not dropped based on the drop probability based on the per-flow thresholds; and wherein applying the drop probability based on per-flow thresholds is performed when the arriving cell is not rejected and is not admitted using the drop probability based on the per-class thresholds.