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:
Jun. 11, 2002
Filed:
May. 01, 1998
Maged E. Beshai, Stittsville, CA;
Richard Vickers, Kanata, CA;
Nortel Networks Limited, St. Laurent, CA;
Abstract
Methods and apparatus for control of a multi-class digital network are described. The network supports a plurality of digital services using dynamically-configured service bands to support various transport modes and qualities of service. Flexible controls with two degrees of freedom are used at the node level to dynamically configure the transport bands. The first degree of freedom is realized using adaptive alternate routing to balance the traffic intensity across the network and, hence, increase the efficiency of the band. The second degree of freedom is achieved through adaptive network partitioning to provide elasticity to the band structure. This permits band capacity to be adaptively reconfigured as connections are added and dropped. The switching nodes use rate controllers to divide the capacity of each link among the connection classes according to rules which ensure consistent service attributes for each band across the network. The rate controllers are adapted to support different transport modes and different packet sizes so that the deconstruction and reconstruction of packets at network edge devices is eliminated. The advantage is a flexible multi-class network which dynamically reconfigures to service traffic loads as service demands fluctuate.