Buffer management based on buffer sharing across ports and per-port minimum buffer guarantee

摘要

This invention introduces an intelligent buffering sharing scheme that supports multiple service classes and multiple drop priorities per class. The available buffers are shared between different queues but at the same time every queue will be guaranteed a certain minimum buffer allocation. Other schemes presented in the literature to not address this minimum buffer guarantee in the presence of multiple service classes and drop priorities. In addition, the scheme presented in this innovation is based on a static threshold approach that has certain implementation cost tradeoff with another dynamic threshold approach presented in the literature that deals with buffer management in the presence of multiple service classes and drop priorities per class.