The invention discloses a method and an apparatus for use in the packet networks and particularly Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks to support traffic of connections requiring a minimum bandwidth at connection establishment. The method and the apparatus further support any mixed traffic including connections requiring a minimum bandwidth, a fixed reserved bandwidth or no bandwidth at connection establishment.
The invention consists in using a first scheduler triggered by absolute time for scheduling the Minimum Service connections up to a rate corresponding to their reserved minimum bandwidth reserved, a second scheduler and a queue of Minimum Service connection identiers for communication between the two scheduling schemes.
With the dual scheduling mechanism of the invention the minimum bandwidth for connections reserving a minimum bandwidth at connection establishment is guaranteed in each point of the connection path and at any time, the level of fairness of the remaining bandwidth sharing depending on the quality of the second scheduler.