POLICY BASED QUALITY OF SERVICE

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide policy-based quality of service (QoS) within a network by adopting a non-deterministic access protocol which not only has a functionality for prioritizing and servicing different traffic classes but also accomplishes additional management of bandwidth and gives a scale with which a service to a packet relating to a specific traffic class can be measured. SOLUTION: A packet forwarding device receives information indicative of a set of traffic groups. The packet forwarding device additionally receives parameters, such as bandwidth and priority order parameters corresponding to the traffic groups. After receiving a packet associated with one of the traffic groups on a first port, the packet forwarding device schedules the packet for transmission from a second port based upon parameters corresponding to the traffic group with which the packet is associated. Advantageously, this method can achieve a weighted equal queueing transport schedule sharing bandwidth based on a series of rules. COPYRIGHT: (C)2007,JPO&INPIT