A frame forwarding and discard architecture (100) in a Differentiated Services network environment. The architecture (100) comprises a discard logic (102) for discarding a frame from a stream (104) of incoming frames of the network environment in accordance with a discard algorithm, the frame being discarded if a predetermined congestion level in the network environment has been reached, and a predetermined backlog limit of a queue associated with the frame, has been reached. Scheduling logic (118) is also provided for scheduling the order in which to transmit one or more enqueued frames of the network environment. |