A technique for controlling a packet data network to maintain network
stability and efficiently utilize network resources through mechanisms
involving per-destination queues and urgency weights for medium access
control. The technique jointly controls congestion, scheduling, and
contention resolution on hop-by-hop basis, such that the length of queues
of packets at a node does not become arbitrarily large. In one
embodiment, queue lengths and urgency weights may be transmitted and
received via medium access control messages.