Traffic scheduling system for air-to-ground communications

The Traffic Scheduling System executes a multi-step process first to identify the bandwidth intensive traffic. The identification of the bandwidth intensive traffic is effected at the stream level by measuring the byte volume of the stream over a predetermined period of time and using this data to classify the stream into one of a plurality of usage categories. The classification of bandwidth intensive traffic is network neutral in that all data is classified at the stream level (source IP, destination IP, source port, destination port). Otherwise, the data is not inspected. Once streams have been classified by the Traffic Scheduling System, the Bandwidth Intensive and Near Real Time traffic can be controlled by a simple Traffic Shaping process executed by the Traffic Scheduling System, using a traffic management parameter such as via the Round-Trip Time of the next higher priority queue, in the set of queues.