Deficit fair priority queuing

Abstract

A deficit fair priority queue scheduling technique includes arranging connections in a waiting queue according to a plurality of priority classes including a first class having a higher priority than a second class. Each time a scheduler visits a queue having waiting connections, a deficit value for each priority class is initialized and used to determine how many bandwidth request packets for that class will be serviced in a round. The highest priority packets will be serviced until the deficit value for that class falls below a selected threshold or there are no remaining waiting packets of that class. Within the same round, the scheduler can service lower priority connections until the deficit value for that service class is below the threshold or there are no remaining packets of that class. Because the lower class packets have a chance of being serviced before all higher priority class packets have been serviced, the disclosed example is a deficit fair priority queuing technique.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.