A method, apparatus and article of manufacture for discarding a data packet. The data packet is classified according to a type of service (TOS) indicator and modified with an internal service class (ISC) indicator according to the TOS indicator. The data packet is modified with a watermark (WM) indicator according to the availability of a system resource. The ISC, WM and a drop preference (DP) indicator of the data packet are compared to a committed information rate (CIR). The packet is discarded if the DP exceeds the CIR.