Modulation of partition parameters achieving delay-based QoS mechanism

A method comprising

• receiving, at a network device, packets of data flows transmitted between hosts connected to a network;
• identifying partitions of a partition configuration for the received packets, wherein the partitions of the partition configuration define bandwidth allocations, and wherein one or more partitions of the partition configuration includes a minimum bandwidth allocation;
• buffering the received packets in association with partition queues corresponding to the identified partitions;
• emitting, from the network device, the received packets according to the bandwidth allocations of the partitions;
• monitoring a latency condition associated with at least one partition having a minimum bandwidth allocation;
• and
• modulating the minimum bandwidth allocation associated with the at least one partition in response to changes in the monitored latency condition, wherein the observed latency condition is network delay corresponding to data flows previously buffered in the partition queue.

A method comprising

• receiving, at a network device, packets of data flows transmitted between hosts connected to a network;
• identifying partitions of a partition configuration for the received packets, wherein the partitions of the partition configuration define bandwidth allocations, and wherein one or more partitions of the partition configuration includes a minimum bandwidth allocation;
• buffering the received packets in association with partition queues corresponding to the identified partitions;
• emitting, from the network device, the received packets according to the bandwidth allocations of the partitions;
• monitoring a latency condition associated with at least one partition having a minimum bandwidth allocation;
• and
• modulating the minimum bandwidth allocation associated with the at least one partition in response to changes in the monitored latency condition, wherein the latency condition is the queuing latency associated with the at least one partition, wherein the at least one partition includes a configured threshold latency value;
• and wherein the modulating step comprises increasing the minimum bandwidth allocation of the partition if the observed latency exceeds the threshold latency value.

An apparatus implementing a delay-based QoS partitioning mechanism, comprising

• a packet processor operative to
• receive a data packet;
• identify a partition corresponding to the data packet;
• a partitioning module operative to
• buffer the data packet in a partition queue corresponding to the identified partition;
• schedule the data packet for transmission from the apparatus based, at least in part, on a minimum bandwidth setting associated with the identified partition;
• and
• wherein the apparatus is operative to modulate the minimum bandwidth setting of the identified partition in response to an observed latency condition, wherein the latency condition is the average queuing latency over a time interval associated with the at least one partition.

An apparatus implementing a delay-based QoS partitioning mechanism, comprising

• a packet processor operative to
• receive a data packet;
• identify a partition corresponding to the data packet;
• a partitioning module operative to
• buffer the data packet in a partition queue corresponding to the identified partition;
• schedule the data packet for transmission from the apparatus based, at least in part, on a minimum bandwidth setting associated with the identified partition;
• and
• wherein the apparatus is operative to modulate the minimum bandwidth setting of the identified partition in response to an observed latency condition, wherein the observed latency condition is network delay corresponding to data flows previously buffered in the partition queue.

An apparatus implementing a delay-based QoS partitioning mechanism, comprising

• a packet processor operative to
• receive a data packet;
• identify a partition corresponding to the data packet, wherein the partition includes a configured threshold latency value, and a configured minimum bandwidth setting;
• a partitioning module operative to
• buffer the data packet in a partition queue corresponding to the identified partition;
• schedule the data packet for transmission from the apparatus based, at least in part, on a minimum bandwidth setting associated with the identified partition;
• and
• wherein the apparatus is operative to modulate the minimum bandwidth setting of the identified partition in response to an observed latency condition, wherein the observed latency condition is network delay corresponding to data flows previously buffered in the partition queue;
• and wherein the apparatus is operative to increase the minimum bandwidth setting of the partition if the observed latency exceeds the threshold latency value.

An apparatus implementing a delay-based QoS partitioning mechanism, comprising

• a memory comprising
• at least one partition queue corresponding to a partition, wherein at least one of the partitions includes a minimum bandwidth setting and a latency threshold;
• and
• an output scheduling data structure comprising a partition object corresponding to the at least one partition queue;
• wherein the at least one partition object comprises a partition identifier and a time stamp;
• a packet processor operative to
• receive a data packet,
• identify a partition queue from the at least one partition queue;
• push a pointer to the data packet on the identified partition queue;
• an output scheduler operative to:
• sort partition objects in the output scheduling data structure based on the corresponding time stamps;
• select the partition object in the output scheduling data structure with the lowest time stamp;
• and
• update the time stamp of the selected partition object based in part on the minimum bandwidth setting corresponding to the selected partition;
• and
• a latency monitoring module operative to adjust the minimum bandwidth setting for at least one partition based on an observed latency condition.