A method and apparatus for reducing delay in the transmission of a plurality of packets by performing IP scheduling and header compression at various layers in a multilayer architecture having a plurality of classifications includes scheduling packets according to classifications. If congestion occurs during scheduling, packets may be discarded. Some packet headers may be compressed thereafter. Packets may further be queued in a first and a second queue, after scheduling, discarding, and compressing, according to at least two classifications. Best Efforts packets may be queued into the lower priority second queue. Classifications may be associated with, for example, QoS levels, delay factors, LFI, and Multilink PPP. Scheduling is performed at higher or lower layers in a multi-layer protocol. The lower layer includes a PPP layer. The lower layer may also include an HDLC layer which creates a tag for packets prior to compression being performed thereupon. The tag may be added to packets at some point thereafter. Tags are removed prior to transmission. An outbound packet queue having a queue depth of no greater than one ensures no more than one Best Efforts packet wait time.
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