Patent 7289515 was granted and assigned to Juniper Networks on October, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A network device is provided. The network device may include at least one set of buffers to buffer network traffic; a monitor to determine varying amounts of available buffer space associated with the buffers; and logic to assign reading rates to the respective buffers for scheduling output of the buffered traffic. The logic may be configured to increase an assigned reading rate associated with one of the buffers to at least one elevated reading rate based on a reduction of the available buffer space in the one buffer to a first amount and reset the at least one elevated reading rate to the assigned reading rate based on a subsequent increase in the available buffer space beyond that of the first amount.