Patent attributes
An ingress packet processor in a device corresponds to a group of ports and receives network packets from ports in its port group. A traffic manager in the device manages buffers storing packet data for transmission to egress packet processors. An ingress arbiter is associated with a port group and connects the port group to an ingress packet processor coupled to the ingress arbiter. The ingress arbiter determines a traffic rate at which the associated ingress packet processor transmits packets to the traffic manager. The ingress arbiter controls an associated traffic shaper to generate a number of tokens that are assigned to the port group. Upon receiving packet data from a port in the group, the ingress arbiter determines, using information from the traffic shaper, whether a token is available. Conditioned on determining that a token is available, the ingress arbiter forwards the packet data to the ingress packet processor.