Methods and apparatus to support dynamic allocation of traffic management resources in a network element

An apparatus, comprising:

• a chassis having a plurality of slots and including a mesh interconnect between the slots;
• a plurality of traffic blades, each installed in the chassis in a respective slot and including interface coupled to the mesh interconnect, the plurality of traffic blades including ingress traffic blades and egress traffic blades;
• a plurality of compute blades, each installed in the chassis in a respective slot and including an interface coupled to the mesh interconnect;
• and
• software components distributed across the plurality of traffic blades and compute blades, the software components to execute on processing elements hosted by the traffic blades and compute blades to perform operations including:
• managing shared pools of traffic management resources comprising an aggregation of local traffic management resources hosted by respective traffic blades, wherein the shared pools of traffic management resources include shared pools of flow queues and traffic policers;
• performing ingress processing for packets received at an ingress traffic blade, the ingress processing including performing classification of the packets to identify a subscriber flow associated with the packets;
• applying traffic management policies on a per-subscriber flow basis using the traffic management resources allocated to each subscriber flow;
• dynamically combining like subscriber service flows into aggregate, higher bandwidth queues to free queues from the shared pool of traffic management resources for allocation to additional subscriber service flows;
• and
• limiting aggregation of the like subscriber service flows to maintain service quality for the aggregated like subscriber service flows.

A network element, comprising:

• a chassis in which a plurality of line cards are installed;
• means for forwarding IP datagrams received at an ingress interface using a plurality of managed traffic flows having different service levels;
• means for associating IP datagrams with a subscriber flow;
• means for assigning a subscriber flow to a managed traffic flow;
• means for maintaining a shared pool of traffic management resources including flow queues and traffic shapers;
• means for dynamically combining like subscriber service flows into aggregate, higher-bandwidth queues to free queues from the shared pool of traffic management resources for allocation to additional subscriber service flows;
• means for limiting aggregation of the like subscriber service flows to maintain service quality for the aggregated like subscriber service flows;
• means for dynamically re-allocating traffic management resources by separating the aggregate, higher-bandwidth queues into lower-bandwidth queues when the shared pool of traffic management resources has queue availability;
• and
• means for dynamically allocating traffic management resources from the shared pool to a managed traffic flow,
• wherein the shared pool of traffic management resources is distributed across the plurality of line cards.