Patent ID: 7649891

Claim:
Method for scheduling transmission-link capacity between packet-switch telecommunications flows in a telecommunications network element, the method comprising: transmitting digital data as constant or variable-length packets, attaching first identifier data to each packet, and classifying said packet, with the aid of said first identifier data, as belonging to one of at least two service-quality classes, attaching second identifier data to each packet, and classifying said packed, with the aid of said second identifier data, as belonging to one of at least two customer flows, wherein said second identifier data is defined on the basis of data inside the packet and/or transported in connection with it and/or on the basis on the input port of the network element, associating each service-quality class with either a branch scheduling on the basis of service-quality class, or to a branch scheduling on the basis of customer flow, relating a storage buffer to each customer-flow/service-quality class pair, in which the packets corresponding to the said customer-flow/service-quality class pair arriving in the network element are stored, selecting a packet to be forwarded from among the packets that are offered for forwarding, and forwarding said selected packet from the network element over an outgoing telecommunications link, and, when the transmission has terminated, selecting the following packet, wherein, when selecting the packet to be forwarded: either the service-quality-class based scheduling branch or the customer-flow based scheduling branch is selected and in the service-quality-class based scheduling branch a service-quality class is selected and within the selected service-quality class a customer flow is selected and in the customer-flow based scheduling branch a customer flow is selected and within the selected customer flow a service-quality class is selected and the selection between the service-quality-class based scheduling branch and the customer-flow based scheduling branch is performed on the basis of priority, in such a way that the service-quality-class based scheduling branch is always selected, if there is a packet in even one storage buffer relating to the service-quality-class based scheduling branch, otherwise the customer-flow based scheduling branch is selected.