Method and apparatus for scheduling a heterogeneous communication flow

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for scheduling a heterogeneous communication flow. A heterogeneous flow is a flow comprising packets with varying classes or levels of service, which may correspond to different priorities, qualities of service or other service characteristics. When a packet is ready for scheduling, it is queued in order in a flow queue that corresponds to the communication flow. The flow queue then migrates among class queues that correspond to the class or level of service of the packet at the head of the flow queue. Thus, after the head packet is scheduled, the flow queue may be dequeued from its current class queue and requeued at the tail of another class queue. If the subsequent packet has the same classification, it may be requeued at the tail of the class queue or may remain in place for another servicing round.

主权项

1. A method of servicing packets according to a class-based scheduler, the method comprising:
dequeuing a flow queue from a first class queue corresponding to a first class of service of a first packet of the flow queue, wherein the flow queue comprises multiple packets having multiple classes of service; dequeuing the first packet from the flow queue; servicing the first packet; classifying a second packet at a head of the flow queue to identify a second class of service; and enqueuing the flow queue in a second class queue corresponding to the second class of service, based solely on the second class of service; wherein: the second class of service of the second packet matches the first class of service of the first packet; the second class queue comprises the first class queue; and said enqueuinq the flow queue within a second class queue comprises re-queuing the flow queue within the first class queue.