Patent attributes
A system and method for null packet replacement having a global scheduler (12) select data from a plurality of self-managed queues (14) to insert in to the data stream in place of null packets. The queues (14) managed by the global scheduler have rules that are private to each queue Q1, Q2, . . . QN. The global scheduler (12) has a set of rules (16) for prioritizing the queues (14). The global scheduler (12) knows the average data rate for each queue (14) and has a priority assigned to each queue (14). Rules for the global scheduler policy (16) are limited to the order of service for the queues. The present invention is advantageous in that the order of service may be changed at the global scheduler (12) without affecting the independent queues (14).