Patent ID: 7969971

Claim:
A method for carrying more than one type of traffic on a single physical link, the method comprising: logically partitioning traffic on a physical link of a network device into a plurality of virtual lanes; receiving first traffic into the physical link of the network device, wherein the first traffic indicates a first virtual lane based on the first traffic indicating a protocol that recovers from dropping of the first traffic; receiving second traffic into the physical link of the network device, wherein the second traffic indicates a second virtual lane based on the second traffic indicating a protocol that does not recover from dropping of the second traffic; applying a first set of rules to the first traffic indicating the first virtual lane, wherein the first set of rules applies a probabilistic drop function to the first traffic in response to latency; and applying a second set of rules to the second traffic indicating the second virtual lane, wherein the second set of rules does not cause frames from the second traffic to be dropped in response to latency.