According to an embodiment a packet forwarding device is disclosed for forwarding data packets on a link within a communication network. The packet forwarding device is further configured to perform the following steps: measuring a load of the link; detecting if the load exceeds one of a plurality of threshold indicative for a level of congestion on the link; and sending a signal to another device in the communication network signalling the level of congestion.

Examples described herein relate to a router. In some examples, the router includes an interface and circuitry coupled to the interface. In some examples, the circuitry is to: based on receipt of a negative acknowledgement (NACK) message: record an endpoint destination of a packet corresponding to the NACK message in a data allocated per-link and drop a second packet transmitted to the endpoint destination corresponding to the NACK message to drop the second packet one or more hops before reaching a congested device.

Examples described herein relate to a network agent, when operational, to: receive a packet, determine transmit rate-related information for a sender network device based at least on operational and telemetry information accumulated in the received packet, and transmit the transmit rate-related information to the sender network device. In some examples, the network agent includes a network device coupled to a server, a server, or a network device. In some examples, the operational and telemetry information comprises: telemetry information generated by at least one network device in a path from the sender network device to the network agent.

There is disclosed a router for routing data on a computing chip comprising a plurality of processing elements, the router comprising: a packet processing pipeline; a dropped packet buffer; and one or more circuits configured to: determine that a data packet in the packet processing pipeline is to be dropped; move the data packet that is to be dropped from the packet processing pipeline to the dropped packet buffer; and re-insert the dropped data packet from the dropped packet buffer into the packet processing pipeline for re-processing.

There is disclosed a router for routing data on a computing chip comprising a plurality of processing elements, the router comprising: a packet processing pipeline; a dropped packet buffer; and one or more circuits configured to: determine that a data packet in the packet processing pipeline is to be dropped; move the data packet that is to be dropped from the packet processing pipeline to the dropped packet buffer; and re-insert the dropped data packet from the dropped packet buffer into the packet processing pipeline for re-processing.

A network device organizes packets into various queues, in which the packets await processing. Queue management logic tracks how long certain packet(s), such as a designated marker packet, remain in a queue. Based thereon, the logic produces a measure of delay for the queue, referred to herein as the queue delay. Based on a comparison of the current queue delay to one or more thresholds, various associated delay-based actions may be performed, such as tagging and/or dropping packets departing from the queue, or preventing addition enqueues to the queue. In an embodiment, a queue may be expired based on the queue delay, and all packets dropped. In other embodiments, when a packet is dropped prior to enqueue into an assigned queue, copies of some or all of the packets already within the queue at the time the packet was dropped may be forwarded to a visibility component for analysis.

A method is described and in some embodiments includes receiving at a network element a transmission control protocol (TCP) packet with TCP options set on a link between a controller and a destination node; if the network element comprises a transit node, comparing a bandwidth value indicated in a TCP options field of the received TCP packet with an outgoing link bandwidth of the network element; if the bandwidth value indicated in the TCP options field is greater than the outgoing link bandwidth of the network element, updating the bandwidth value indicated in the TCP options field to be equal to the outgoing link bandwidth of the network element; and forwarding the TCP packet to a next network element. If the bandwidth value indicated in the TCP options field is not greater than the outgoing link bandwidth, the bandwidth value indicated in the TCP options field is not changed.

A method of powerline communications in a powerline communications (PLC) network including a first PLC device and at least a second PLC device. The first PLC device transmits a data frame to the second node over a PLC channel. The second PLC device has a data buffer for storing received information. The second PLC device runs a flow control algorithm which determines a current congestion condition or a projected congestion condition of the data buffer based on at least one congestion parameter. The current congestion condition and projected congestion condition include nearly congested and fully congested. When the current or projected congestion condition is either nearly congested or fully congested, the second PLC device transmits a BUSY including frame over the PLC channel to at least the first PLC device. The first PLC device defers transmitting of any frames to the second PLC device for a congestion clearing wait time.

An adaptive hybrid control method and apparatus are provided for performing active queue management in a data packet routing device which adaptively combines fuzzy controller logic, alone or in combination with RBF-PID control logic, to provide improved management of network congestion by applying a nonlinear model for buffer utilization to at least a buffer size measure for the target buffer to generate at least a fuzzy membership function adjustment signal, and then supplying the fuzzy membership function adjustment signal to a first controller to automatically tune membership function parameters of the first controller, where the first controller calculates a first packet select probability value for the data packet based at least partly on the fuzzy membership function adjustment signal and an error measure between the buffer size setpoint and the buffer size measure.

Described embodiments improve the performance of a computer network via selectively forwarding packets to bypass quality of service (QoS) processing, avoiding processing delays during critical periods of high demand, increasing throughput and efficiency may be increased by sacrificing a small amount of QoS accuracy. QoS processing may be applied to a subset of packets of a flow or connection, referred to herein as lazy processing or lazy byte batching. Packets that bypass QoS processing may be immediately forwarded with the same QoS settings as packets of the flow for which QoS processing is applied, resulting in tremendous overhead savings with only minimal decline in accuracy.