Patent ID: 7623525

Claim:
A method of bandwidth reservations through a switch by employing counters associated with input-output queues, comprising: loading a plurality of counters at a beginning of each frame of a length F to a negotiated number of credits, wherein said credit are allocated in the switch based on a maximal matching scheduling, to input-output pairs (i,j), if for 1≦i, j≦N, T i +E i +R j ≦F +1 where T i is a number of credits allocated to input i within a frame, E i is a number of credits allocated to input i for packet forwarding within a frame, R j is a number of credits allocated to output j, F is a frame length, and N is a number of ports; facilitating a competition for service by a plurality of queues with positive counters; selecting a competing queue from said plurality of queues; and decrementing by one a counter of said plurality of counters associated with the competing queue that is selected.