Prioritized PVC management queues for improved frame processing capabilities

An apparatus for processing link status messages received from networking devices operative to communicate with each other in accordance with a communications protocol, the link status messages communicating the status of an associated message relay link between said networking devices, a first number of the link status messages each being associated with a predetermined response interval, wherein a failure to respond to a link status message within said predetermined response interval will result in the said associated message relay link being declared inoperative, the apparatus comprising:

• (a) a first input port for receiving said link status messages;
• (b) two message queues for storing and retrieving said received link status messages, each of said queues respectively corresponding to one of two response priority levels representing a highest priority and a lowest priority, each of the response priority levels being assigned to one of two messages classes;
• the first message class being associated with link status messages having relatively short predetermined response intervals and the second message class being associated with link status messages having relatively long predetermined response intervals, and wherein said highest priority is assigned to said first message class and said lowest priority is assigned to said second message class;
• (c) a first processor for determining the message class associated with each of said received link status messages, and for allocating each of said link status messages to a corresponding one of said queues based upon the response priority level assigned to said determined message class;
• (d) a second processor for retrieving each of said link status messages from said queues;
• and
• (e) a first output port for dispatching said retrieved link status messages.

An apparatus for receiving, processing and replying to PVC management frames associated with a Frame Relay protocol environment and an ATM protocol environment, the apparatus comprising:

• (a) a first input port for receiving the PVC management frames from the Frame Relay protocol environment;
• (b) a second input port for receiving the PVC management frames from the ATM protocol environment;
• (c) first and second message queues for storing and retrieving PVC management frames received from the Frame Relay protocol environment and the ATM protocol environment, the first and second message queues respectively corresponding to first and second response priority levels, the first priority level having highest priority and the second priority level having lowest priority, each of the response priority levels being respectively assigned to first and second message classes, said highest priority being assigned to the first message class and said lowest priority being assigned to the second message class, the first message class being associated with status enquiry frames and status frames received from the Frame Relay protocol environment, the second message class being associated with status enquiry frames and status frames received from the ATM protocol environment and with async/update frames received from the Frame Relay and ATM protocol environments;
• (d) a first processor for determining whether each received PVC management frame belongs to the first message class or the second message class, and for allocating each PVC management frame to the first queue if it belongs to the first message class and to the second queue if it belongs to the second message class;
• (e) a second processor for retrieving each PVC management frame from the queues in a concurrent round robin manner and for generating a reply thereto in the form of a response PVC management frame;
• (f) a first output port for dispatching said response PVC management frame to the Frame Relay protocol environment if the response PVC management frame is generated in reply to a received PVC management frame associated with the Frame Relay protocol environment;
• and
• (g) a second output port for dispatching said response PVC management frame to the ATM protocol environment if the response PVC management frame is generated in reply to a received PVC management frame associated with the ATM protocol environment.