Patent ID: 7715418

Claim:
An apparatus for ensuring Quality of Service (QoS) in a Layer 2 (L2) network in which a synchronous Ethernet bridge interfaces with the (L2) network, said apparatus comprising: a classifier for classifying an ingress packet according to a Per-Hop Behavior (PHB) mapped to a Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) value of the packet and providing the classified packet to one of a predetermined synchronous packet queue and a predetermined asynchronous packet queue; a buffer queue with a plurality of queues mapped to priority levels, for buffering the classified packet; a marker for marking the buffered packet as a synchronous packet or, if the buffered packet is an asynchronous packet, marking the packet in a predetermined format corresponding to a priority level of the packet; and a synchronous Ethernet scheduler for scheduling the marked packet; wherein the marker marks the packet as a synchronous packet by converting an Ether Type (Etype) of a Media Access Control (MAC) header in the packet.