Patent ID: 7395346

Claim:
An apparatus for relieving network packet congestion, the apparatus comprising: an input port for receiving a stream of network packets, each network packet formatted according to a first protocol and having at least one application packet formatted according to a second protocol included therein, wherein the at least one application packet includes a content having at least a portion of a frame of information; and a packet reducer in communication with the input port for modifying the received stream of network packets, wherein the packet reducer dynamically implements a processing scheme of a plurality of processing schemes for the received stream of network packets, wherein at least one of the processing schemes is a scheme for examining each network packet of the stream of network packets and determining for each network packet of the stream of network packets whether to process that network packet of the stream of network packets using information from the at least one application packet of the given network packet, wherein each network packet of the stream of network packets is encapsulated within a respective internal device packet that is generated within the apparatus and which comprises a given network packet, an internal device packet header and a plurality of flags indicative of at least a selected buffer to which the internal device packet should be sent within the apparatus and a program priority level of the internal device packet, wherein the packet reducer monitors the selected buffer in the apparatus that buffers packets to determine a buffer level for the selected buffer, and responsive to the buffer level being above a first threshold in the selected buffer, replaces at least one network packet that carries the portion of the frame of information with a second network packet carrying a new frame of information, wherein the at least one network packet has a first bit size and the second network packet has a second bit size that is smaller than the first bit size; and responsive to the buffer level being above a second threshold in the selected buffer, drops the application packet that make up the frame of information, wherein the frame of information is not included in an output of the packet reducer.