Patent ID: 7872969

Claim:
A method for controlling the congestion of cells on a path comprising at least one channel in a switch using a packet-aware cell discarding feature, each cell including data having at least two states, the method comprising the steps of: learning of the existence of active channels within the path by monitoring the header of cells; monitoring the state of the data in each cell received at the switch; identifying a change in the state of the data from a first cell to a subsequent cell; and enabling the packet-aware cell discarding feature for an active channel if the switch receives a cell associated with the channel with the data in a predetermined one of the two states; applying the packet-aware cell discarding feature for the channel based on the state of the data within subsequent cells associated with the channel, where applying the packet-aware cell discarding feature comprises: allocating memory to the channel; and maintaining, in the memory, the state of subsequent cells received at the switch which are associated with the channel, wherein the memory is accessed by hashing information associated with the channel to create an index into the memory.