Patent ID: 6990115

Claim:
A queue control method for scheduling fixed size traffic elements for transmission on a link from a number of queues, each queue having an assigned weight determined in dependence on predetermined characteristics of the queue and an associated calculation remainder variable, a linear array being maintained in a memory, each array index corresponding to a transmission priority and being capable of referencing a list of queues, queues referenced by a low value array index being selected for transmission before queues referenced by higher value array index; said queue control method comprises the steps of: selecting the first queue referenced by the lowest array index for transmission and, moving the reference to a queue selected for transmission to a new array index, the new array index being calculated by a predetermined function using a current array index referencing the queue, the queue's weight and the queue's calculation remainder variable value as parameters wherein the predetermined function is: Log 2 K[{CI*L/K+QIx+Wx} modulo L], where K is the size of the array, CI is the current array index referencing the queue, L is a predetermined system constant, QIx is the queue x's calculation remainder variable and Wx is queue x's weight.