Patent ID: 7613199

Claim:
A network device, comprising: a plurality of queues to temporarily store data associated with a stream of data, each of the plurality of queues having an associated weight and an associated rate-control parameter, the weight associated with one of the plurality of queues identifying a fraction of a total bandwidth of the stream assigned to the one of the plurality of queues, the rate-control parameter associated with the one of the plurality of queues identifying whether the one of the plurality of queues is permitted to oversubscribe; and an oversubscription engine to: determine an amount of bandwidth used by each of the plurality of queues, and reallocate a portion of the fraction of the total bandwidth from a first one of the plurality of queues to one or more other ones of the plurality of queues based on the amount of bandwidth used by each of the plurality of queues, the weight associated with the first queue, and the rate-control parameter associated with each of the plurality of queues.