Patent ID: 8315187

Claim:
A head of line (HOL) allocation module, comprising: a class of service (CoS) mapping module configured to receive packets from a corresponding network switch source port and to assign one of a plurality of classes of service to each received packet; a plurality of queue set mapping modules configured to receive packets from the CoS mapping module, each queue set mapping module having an associated CoS and configured to receive packets assigned to the CoS associated with that queue set mapping module; and a plurality of queue sets, each queue set having a plurality of assigned queues, each queue set configured to receive packets from a corresponding one of the plurality of queue set mapping modules and to distribute the received packets amongst the assigned queues, wherein the packets received by each queue set have the same CoS and each of the plurality of queue sets is associated with a HOL blocking factor that is a ratio of destination ports to virtual queues provided for the CoS supported by the corresponding network switch source port, and wherein the HOL blocking factor associated with a first queue set is different from the HOL blocking factor associated with a second queue set.