Patent ID: 7626926

Claim:
A method for reducing congestion in a radio access network, the method comprising: monitoring, at a radio node, congestion in a stream of data packets that is received at the radio node from a radio network controller over a network and that is to be sent over an air link to one or more access terminals, wherein monitoring the congestion comprises: monitoring numbers of the stream of data packets for a gap in sequential numbering associated with the stream of data packets; and monitoring a one way delay in the stream of data packets; and reducing a rate at which the stream of data packets is sent by the radio network controller over the network to the radio node in response to the monitoring, wherein reducing the rate at which the stream of data packets is sent over the network to the radio node comprises: reducing a rate at which the radio network controller transmits data packets into the network, wherein reducing the rate at which the radio network controller transmits the data packets into the network comprises: using a leaky bucket mechanism to reduce the rate at which the data packets enter the network, wherein using the leaky bucket mechanism comprises: incrementing a counter at a rate of R bytes per second; decrementing the counter by an amount proportional to a size of a data packet that is transmitted to the network; and preventing data packets from being transmitted to the network if the counter reaches zero.