Cost effective congestion isolation for lossless ethernet

A network switch, comprising:

• a plurality of ingress ports, each ingress port comprising a normal priority queue and a congested priority queue;
• a plurality of egress ports, each egress port comprising a normal priority queue and a congested priority queue;
• and
• a congestion isolation engine configured to:
• identify congestion at a first egress port of the plurality of egress ports;
• compute a hash for a first data packet received at a first ingress port of the plurality of egress ports;
• compare the computed hash against a list of isolation hashes, the list of isolation hashes comprising one or more previous hashes associated with an isolated data packet;
• in response to identifying a match between the computed hash and a previous hash of the list of isolation hashes, queueing the first data packet in a congested queue of the first ingress port;
• in response to determining no match between the computed hash and any of the previous hashes of the list of isolation hashes, applying a random selection mechanism to the first data packet;
• and
• in response to the first data packet being selected for isolation according to the random selection mechanism:
• queueing the first data packet in the congested queue of the first ingress port;
• adding the computed hash for the first data packet to the list of isolation hashes to create an updated list of isolation hashes;
• and
• sending a congestion isolation message to an upstream device, the congestion isolation message including the updated list of isolation hashes.

A system, comprising:

• a first forwarding switch comprising:
• a plurality of ingress ports, each ingress port comprising a normal priority queue and a congested priority queue;
• a plurality of egress ports, each egress port comprising a normal priority queue and a congested priority queue;
• and
• a first congestion isolation engine configured to:
• identify congestion at a first egress port of the plurality of egress ports;
• compute a hash for a first data packet received at a first ingress port of the plurality of egress ports;
• compare the computed hash against a list of isolation hashes, the list of isolation hashes comprising one or more previous hashes associated with an isolated data packet;
• in response to identifying a match between the computed hash and a previous hash of the list of isolation hashes, queueing the first data packet in a congested queue of the first ingress port;
• in response to determining no match between the computed hash and any of the previous hashes of the list of isolation hashes, applying a random selection mechanism to the first data packet;
• and
• in response to the first data packet being selected for isolation according to the random selection mechanism:
• queueing the first data packet in the congested queue of the first ingress port;
• adding the computed hash for the first data packet to the list of isolation hashes to create an updated list of isolation hashes;
• and
• sending a congestion isolation message the congestion isolation message including the updated list of isolation hashes.