Method and apparatus for detecting disabled physical devices and deleting undeliverable cells

摘要

A system and method for flushing cells in an ATM network sets an interval timer during which it would be expected that an active physical output would indicate it could accept a cell. When an interval elapses, a physical output that has not indicated it is ready to accept a cell is marked as disabled and may remain so until the output is reset. Cells in an output queue to a disabled cell are flushed during periods when no higher priority cells are available to be sent.