Patent ID: 7961620

Claim:
A network scheduler, where the network scheduler selectively supports a work conserving mode in network scheduling units (NSUs) serving as network entities by using a token bucket scheme, such that the network scheduler ensures an allocated network bandwidth or enables the NSUs to use a remaining bandwidth; and the network scheduler manages the NSUs by classifying the NSUs into a green state, a red state, a yellow state, and a black state according to a token value, a selection or non-selection of the work conserving mode, and an existence or non-existence of a packet request to be processed, wherein the network scheduler reads NSUs of the green state from a green list, refills the read NSUs with tokens, extracts packet requests from the read NSUs, and processes the extracted packet requests; the network scheduler moves the NSUs selecting the work conserving mode to a yellow list when the token value is negative (−); and the network scheduler maintains the NSUs in the green list without changing states of the NSUs when the token value is positive (+).