Adaptive packet marking for maintaining end-to-end throughput in a differentiated-services internet

This paper examines the use of adaptive priority marking for providing soft bandwidth guarantees in a differentiated-services Internet. In contrast to other proposals for achieving the same objective, the proposed scheme does not require resource reservation for individual connections and can be supported with minimal changes to the network infrastructure. It uses modest support from the network in the form of priority handling for appropriately marked packets, and relies on intelligent transmission control mechanisms at the edges of the network to achieve the desired throughput levels. This paper describes the control mechanisms and evaluates their behavior in various network environments. These mechanisms are shown to have several salient features which make them suitable for deployment in an evolving Internet. © 1999 IEEE.