Cisco Systems, Inc.
Allowing packet drops for lossless protocols

Abstract:

Techniques for dropping packets at congested network elements for no drop traffic are described. A network element in communication with a congested network element initiates a copy packet queue and stores a copy of each transmitted no-drop packet sent to the congested element. When the network element receives an indication that the congested element has dropped a no-drop packet, the network element begins retransmission of the dropped packets to the congested element from the copy packet queue, thus providing a lossless network while allowing for dropped packets.