Oversubscription of Fibre Channel links over a transport network is
provided. A transport interface according to the present invention may
maintain a small ingress buffer in addition to the normal egress buffer.
The ingress buffer is primarily used for oversubscription and the egress
buffer is primarily used for flow control. Ready indications to multiple
local Fibre Channel ports may be locally generated when flow control
conditions permit and may be distributed among the local Fibre Channel
ports in response to preconfigured bandwidth sharing weights. Transport
network efficiency is achieved by statistical multiplexing without
significant increase in buffer memory requirements or introduction of
latency into the flow control mechanism.