US Patent 7272149 Bandwidth allocation systems and methods

A system for shaping traffic from a plurality of data streams includes a queuing stage having a plurality of first-in, first-out shaping queues, the queuing stage being configured to classify incoming entries of traffic, and to assign an incoming element of traffic to a selected queue of the first queuing stage depending on characteristics of the element, the queuing stage further being configured to allocate bandwidth to each of the queues using time division multiplexing. A method for shaping traffic from a plurality of data streams includes providing a plurality of first-in, first-out queues; assigning traffic to the queues depending on the characteristics of the traffic; and controlling traffic flow out of the queues using a bandwidth allocation table.