Leaky bucket type traffic shaper and bandwidth controller

Abstract

A traffic shaper comprises a bandwidth controllerhaving a plurality of leaky bucket units-to-n prepared in correspondence with buffer memories-to-n, and an output queue designation unitfor specifying a buffer memory from which a packet is to be read out. Each of the leaky bucket unitshas a level counterfor decrementing the count value at a predetermined rate, and a level increasertofor increasing the count value of the level counter by a value proportional to the product of the length of a transmitted packet and a unitary increment value which is variable depend on the current count value of the level counter.