Adtran Gmbh

Brent Christopher Priddy

Coleman D Bagwell

Walter Martin Steverson

A system and method is provided for prioritizing packets at an Ethernet interface of a network device based on the destination MAC address in the packets. The Ethernet interface has a MAC table that lists the MAC addresses that can be accepted by the Ethernet interface. The MAC table can include one or more MAC addresses associated with low priority packets and one or more MAC addresses associated with high priority packets. When conditions at the network device exceed a threshold, the MAC table can be updated to disable or delete the MAC addresses associated with the low priority packets. By disabling the MAC addresses for low priority packets, only the MAC addresses associated with high priority packets remain in the MAC table, thereby enabling only high priority packets to be recognized and passed by the Ethernet interface to the CPU.

Systems and methods for prioritizing packets

A network element has at least one receiver, a software queue, and at least one transmitter. A data path thread moves data packets from a receive queue of the receiver to the software queue, and a transmit driver moves data packets from the software queue to a transmit queue of the transmitter. A flow indicator associated with the software queue is controlled to indicate when at least one data packet remains in the software queue. A queue management thread polls the flow indicator to determine when the software queue should be accessed for ensuring that data packets do not remain in the software queue for extended time periods between data bursts.

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Harvest, AL, United States of America

Brent Christopher Priddy