Dynamic updating of scheduling hierarchy in a traffic manager of a network processor

Described embodiments provide for dynamically controlling a scheduling rate of each node in a scheduling hierarchy of a network processor. A traffic manager generates a tree scheduling hierarchy having a root scheduler and N scheduler levels. The network processor generates tasks corresponding to received packets. A traffic manager enqueues received tasks in a queue of the scheduling hierarchy associated with a data flow. The queue has a parent scheduler at each level of the hierarchy up to the root scheduler. The traffic manager maintains one or more scheduling data structures for each node in the scheduling hierarchy. If the traffic manager receives a rate reduction request corresponding to a given node of the scheduling hierarchy, the traffic manager updates one or more indicators in the scheduling data structure corresponding to the given node and removes the given node from the scheduling hierarchy, thereby reducing the scheduling rate of the node.