Patent ID: 6914882

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a plurality of users; resources that are partitioned according to a ranking of bandwidth associated with users, wherein the resources are partitioned according to a highest bandwidth supported by a node and an amount of bandwidth provided to each of the plurality of users is ranked from highest to lowest; and a queue scheduler that a) schedules one or more packets within the node during scheduling cycles, wherein each scheduling cycle is partitioned into regions that are coextensive with the highest bandwidth supported by the node and each schedule cycle is coextensive with a highest counting modulo partitions, and b) services users associated with the highest bandwidth in at least one partition during each scheduling cycle and services consecutive bandwidth partitions of user associated with lower bandwidths across several cycles, wherein a number of scheduling cycles between servicing of consecutive bandwidth partitions increases as the bandwidth associated with the user decreases and the partition spacing for servicing a lower bandwidth user is determined by multiplying a number of lower bandwidth users that can be serviced by the next highest bandwidth by a partition modulo of the next highest bandwidth.