Real-time traffic shaper with keep-alive property for best-effort traffic

摘要

An advanced traffic shaper is provided for shaping real-time traffic in an IP-based network while simultaneously providing keep-alive bandwidth for best-effort traffic. The traffic shaper comprises a packet classifier coupled to receive an incoming packet from the network and to classify the incoming packet as one of a real-time packet and a best-effort packet; a packet discarding block coupled to perform traffic shaping of the incoming packet from the packet classifier and discard the incoming packet in accordance with traffic shaping parameters; connection queues coupled to temporary store real-time packets and best-effort packets from the packet discarding block, respectively; and a packet scheduling block coupled to send the real-time and best-effort packets from the connection queues to an outgoing device in accordance with the traffic shaping parameters.