Quality of Service Control in Multiple Hop Wireless Communication Environments

An apparatus comprising:

• a processing element configured to cause an egress station to:
• receive, via wireless communications, a plurality of packet data units (PDUs) associated with at least one service flow via at least one tunnel established with an ingress station along a wireless communication access path in which the egress station resides in a wireless communication environment;
• and
• for each PDU of the plurality of PDUs:
• receive, from the ingress station along with the PDU, information bearing on a quality of service (QoS) class for the PDU, wherein and determined by the ingress station based on the QoS class identified;
• and
• prioritize delivery of packets to be transmitted to at least one user terminal, based on the received information bearing on the identified QoS class of the PDU.

A non-transitory, computer accessible memory medium storing program instructions executable by one or more processors to cause an egress station to:

• receive, via wireless communications, a plurality of packet data units (PDUs) associated with at least one service flow via at least one tunnel established with an ingress station along a wireless communication access path in which the egress station resides in a wireless communication environment;
• and
• for each PDU of the plurality of PDUs:
• receive, from the ingress station along with the PDU, information bearing on a quality of service (QoS) class for the PDU, wherein and determined by the ingress station based on the QoS class identified;
• and
• prioritize delivery of packets to be transmitted to at least one user terminal, based on the received information bearing on the identified QoS class of the PDU.