Patent ID: 7796507

Claim:
A method of congestion control at a communication network node, the node handling a plurality of egress data streams and corresponding ingress data streams and comprising one or more applications, each application configured to process a different one of the ingress data streams, comprising: monitoring egress data congestion conditions at the node for one or more of the egress data streams by comparing egress link utilization to one or more egress link utilization thresholds and setting egress congestion indicators in selected ones of the ingress data streams based on said comparing egress link utilization to the one or more egress link utilization thresholds; reducing egress data rates responsive to detecting egress data congestion; monitoring ingress data congestion conditions at the node for one or more of the ingress data streams by comparing ingress link utilization to one or more ingress link utilization thresholds and setting ingress congestion indicators in selected ones of the ingress data streams based on said comparing ingress link utilization to the one or more ingress link utilization thresholds; and reducing ingress data rates responsive to detecting ingress data congestion; wherein setting one or more ingress and egress congestion indicators in selected ones of the ingress data streams comprises selecting particular ones of the applications to be responsive to the ingress and egress congestion indicators, and setting one or more ingress and egress congestion indicators in ingress data streams that are processed by the selected applications.