Patent ID: 7239612

Claim:
A method of discarding a prioritized fair share of traffic of network connections, the method comprising: receiving traffic of at least a particular network connection; filling a portion of a fixed buffer allocation space with traffic of the particular network connection, wherein a buffer in the fixed buffer allocation space is associated with a fixed buffer allocation queue identification, wherein the fixed buffer allocation space is associated with a first discard scheme which determines if the traffic will be accepted into the buffer; filling a separate portion of a prioritized fair share buffer space with traffic of the particular network connection, wherein a separate buffer in the prioritized fair share buffer space is associated with a separate prioritized fair share queue identification, wherein the prioritized fair share buffer space is associated with a second discard scheme which determines if the traffic will be accepted into the separate buffer, the second discard scheme being different than the first discard scheme; and discarding the portion of the fixed buffer allocation space or the separate portion of the prioritized fair share buffer space as lowest priority traffic of the particular network connection based on the first discard scheme or the second discard scheme, the first or second discard scheme determined based on the fixed buffer allocation queue identification or the separate prioritized fair share queue identification associated with the lowest priority traffic.