Abstract: The invention includes a method and apparatus for processing traffic in a load-balancing network comprising a plurality of nodes. The method includes determining an egress node associated with each of a plurality of packets of a traffic flow received at an ingress node of the plurality of nodes, determining, for each packet, whether a congestion condition exists on the egress node, and processing the packets such that packets associated with egress nodes for which the congestion condition does not exist have a different queuing priority within the load-balancing network than packets associated with egress nodes for which the congestion condition exists. The ingress node on which the traffic flow is received is adapted for splitting the traffic flow into a plurality of traffic flow portions independent of the egress node by which each packet is scheduled to exit the load-balancing network.

Abstract: The invention includes a method for determining a maximum size of a token bucket. One method includes detecting a condition and determining the maximum token bucket size in response to the condition. The condition may include one of a packet drop and a reduction of a current token bucket size, an actual information rate satisfying a rate threshold, or a current token bucket size satisfying a size threshold. Another method includes detecting a packet drop, detecting a reduction of a current token bucket size, and determining the maximum token bucket size in response to the packet drop and the reduction of the current token bucket size. Another method includes detecting a condition and performing an initial bucket size adaptation in response to the condition where the initial bucket size adaptation has an initial adaptation rate greater than a subsequent adaptation rate associated with a subsequent bucket size adaptation.

Abstract: Ethernet hardware is configured to realize a load balancing network by using Ethernet bridging hardware that is VLAN-aware.

Abstract: A new routing scheme for Ethernet that is based on load balancing is provided. Some advantages of load balancing are that it is robust to dynamic traffic demands, requires minimal over-provisioning, is simple, static, and requires only bandwidth profile associated with SLAs at the ingress and egress links. This scheme is applied to Ethernet in exemplary embodiments by load balancing traffic on different spanning trees so that these advantages are maintained. In addition, exemplary embodiments perform better than MLB, including a considerable reduction in delay.

Abstract: Method and apparatus for rebooting a bridge in a network containing a plurality of bridges. The method includes sending notification to other bridges that the bridge will be updated; updating the bridge; restoring a state of the network prior to the bridge being updated; and sending notification to the other bridges in the network that the update is complete. Sending notification includes sending a special bridge protocol data unit along forwarding links connected to the bridge. The method further includes the other bridges initiating a condition of not expecting additional messages from the bridge subsequent to the notification of the update and disabling a part of the bridge prior to updating. An apparatus includes a forwarding plane adapted to provide physical control of ports in the bridge and a control plane adapted for issuing and executing instructions in accordance with the method that control the physical action of the ports.