Patent ID: 7230917

Claim:
A method for conveying per-channel flow control information pertaining to status of output buffers located on line cards to a forwarding engine of an intermediate network node, the method comprising the steps of: comparing a depth of each output buffer with a predetermined threshold value; generating a state of a flow bit for each output buffer associated with an output channel; and providing the state of the flow bit to the forwarding engine at a time interval, the state of the flow bit denoting that data is accepted at the output buffer if the depth of the buffer is less than the predetermined threshold value, and the state of the flow bit denoting that data is susceptible to overflow at the output buffer if the depth of the output buffer is greater than the predetermined threshold, and the length of the time interval proportional to the bandwidth of the channel, such that the state of the flow bit is provided more often to the forwarding engine for a higher bandwidth channel than for a lower bandwidth channel.