Patent ID: 7281043

Claim:
An intermediate network device for use in a computer network carrying network traffic corresponding to sessions, the intermediate network device comprising: a traffic scheduler having one or more resources for use in forwarding network traffic received at the device at different rates; a classification engine configured to identify the received network traffic based upon predefined criteria; a resource reservation engine in communicating relationship with the traffic scheduler and the classification engine; a receiver arranged to receive a first request from a first sourcing entity for a first session to a first receiving entity, wherein the first session is assigned a session group identifier (ID), the receiver further arranged to receive a second request from the first sourcing entity for a second session to a second receiving entity, wherein the second request is assigned a second group identifier (ID); and wherein, in response to the requests to reserve resources, the resource reservation engine determines whether the session group ID of the first session matches the session group ID of the second session and, if so, directs the traffic scheduler to share resources that are reserved for the second session with the first session.