Arbitration of multiple-thousands of flows for convergence enhanced ethernet

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program code embodied therewith, wherein the computer readable storage medium is not a transitory signal per se, the embodied program code executable by a device to cause the device to perform a method comprising:

• receiving, by the device, a plurality of flows, each flow comprising packets of data;
• assigning, by the device, a service credit to each of the plurality of flows, each flow's service credit being defaulted to a predetermined numerical value when initially assigned and adjusted after providing service to a flow corresponding to the flow's service credit;
• assigning, by the device, a weight parameter as a numerical value to each of the plurality of flows;
• enqueuing, by the device, a flow which receives new unserviced packets and is not present in any control queue to an end of a first control queue when the flow's service credit is greater than zero;
• enqueuing, by the device, a flow which receives new unserviced packets and is not present in any control queue to an end of a second control queue when the flow's service credit is not greater than zero;
• selecting, by the device, a flow from a head of the first control queue unless the first control queue is empty or there is indication that the first control queue should be avoided, wherein a flow is selected from a head of the second control queue in response to a determination that the first control queue is empty or there is indication that the first control queue should be avoided;
• providing, by the device, a number of units of service to the selected flow;
• and
• decreasing, by the device, the selected flow's service credit by an amount corresponding to the number of units of service provided thereto.