Dynamic fair queuing to support best effort traffic in an ATM network

摘要

A flow control apparatus implemented in a virtual path ATM communication system comprising a plurality of nodes interconnected by physical links which comprise virtual paths including a plurality of virtual channels. A connection between two nodes is defined as the combination of a physical link, a virtual path, and a virtual channel. Connections are shared between a reserved bandwidth service and a best effort service. ATM data cells conveyed on said best effort service are routed from node to node by analyzing their virtual connection identifier. Queues, allocated as needed from a pool of free queues, are used to store all incoming ATM data cells having the same virtual channel identifier.