PREDICTIVE CONGESTION MANAGEMENT IN A DATA COMMUNICATIONS SWITCH USING TRAFFIC AND SYSTEM STATISTICS

An apparatus and method for performing congestion management in a switch or router is disclosed. The apparatus acquires and or generates performance metrics for a plurality of switching module coupled via a switching fabric, generates a performance index based on the attributes from the switching modules, and allocates switching fabric bandwidth based on a weighted combination of the performance metrics. The performance metrics may include past and presents values of some attributes as well as predicted values.