Patent ID: 7349331

Claim:
A method of scheduling a service resource shared between multiple information packet flows, said flows generating respective associated queues and being served by the attribution of a token, this plurality of flows including synchronous flows requiring a guaranteed minimum service rate and asynchronous flows destined to exploit the service capacity of said resource left unused by the synchronous flows, comprising the steps of: providing a server that visits the queues associated with said flows in successive cycles and and that determines a time value of expected rotation that in turn identifies an amount of time necessary for the server to complete a visit cycle to the respective queues; associating with each synchronous flow a respective synchronous capacity value indicative of the maximum amount of time for which a synchronous flow can be served before relinquishing the token; associating with each synchronous flow (i) a first respective delay value that identifies a value that must be made up for the respective queue to be served, and a second value that indicates an instant in which the server visited the respective queue in the previous cycle, determining for said respective queue an amount of time that has passed since the previous visit of the server, serving each queue associated to a respective synchronous flow for a maximum service time equal to said respective value of synchronous capacity, and serving each queue associated to a respective asynchronous flow only if the server's visit occurs before an expected instant, said advance being determined as the difference between said expected rotation time value and an amount of time that has passed since the server's previous visit and any accumulated delay; wherein if positive, this difference defines a maximum service time for each said queue.