Patent ID: 6980513

Claim:
A method for allocating bandwidth among minimum cell rate (MCR) connections and best effort connections in an ATM switch, said method comprising: a) associating each MCR connection with an individual queue; b) associating each queue with a cell count register and a MCR register; c) setting the values of the MCR registers based on guaranteed bandwidth of all the MCR connections and the presently available bandwidth of the associated port in the switch; d) setting the values of each cell count register based on its associated MCR register value; e) listing all of the MCR connection queues in an MCR service list; f) dequeuing cells from the MCR connection queues in a round robin fashion according to the MCR service list during a service interval; g) decrementing cell count registers as associated queues are dequeued; and h) removing MCR connection queues from the MCR service list when the queues become empty or the cell count register for the queue goes to zero during the service interval whichever occurs first.