The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 02, 2001
Filed:
Apr. 03, 1998
John Walter Linville, Durham, NC (US);
Brad Alan Makrucki, Durham, NC (US);
Edward Stanley Suffern, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
Jeffrey Robert Warren, Apex, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Flow control is implemented at a given node in a network of LAN switches by having the node monitor the occupancy levels of buffers or queues. When a buffer is found to be occupied or filled beyond a predetermined threshold level, a pause command is generated for the source currently supplying traffic to the buffer. A pause time PT is calculated using an equation which takes into account: the transmission rate of the identified source, the transmission rate of the output link servicing the congested buffer and queue length that can be occupied without a congestion condition being declared. To reduce the chance that queue lengths will “oscillate” about their threshold point due to multiple sources resuming transmission at the same time, each calculated pause time is adjusted to a randomly selected value PT(ran) falling within a range of PT±kPT where k may be on the order of fifty percent.