Preserving packet order for data flows when applying traffic shapers

摘要

Apparatus having corresponding methods and computer programs comprise: an ingress circuit to receive a plurality of data flows, wherein each data flow includes packets of data having a desired order of transmission; an unshaped queue; one or more shaped queues; a forwarding engine to transfer the packets in each data flow from the ingress circuit to the unshaped queue when a shaping flag for the respective data flow is not set, and to transfer the packets in each data flow from the ingress circuit to a corresponding shaped queue when the shaping flag for the respective data flow is set; an egress circuit to transmit the packets; and a scheduler to dequeue the packets from the unshaped queue to the egress circuit, and to dequeue the packets from each shaped queue to the egress circuit only when no packets for the respective data flow remain in the unshaped queue.