Rate adaptive shaping for the efficient transport of data traffic in diffserv networks

In this paper, we introduce the need for traffic shaping for the efficient transport of aggregate Internetworking traffic over Differentiated Services (DiffServ) networks. We propose a family of rate adaptive shapers (RASs) that aim at reducing the traffic burstiness. Although RASs can be used in either pure Best-Effort or any QoS enabled networks, our study is focused on their use in DiffServ networks where the traffic is subject to traffic control consisting of marking the packets according to a pre-negotiated traffic conditioning specification. RASs aim to increase the ratio of packets that are assigned the highest level of forwarding treatment by buffering and appropriate scheduling of packets before applying traffic control functions. The key ideas that motivate RASs design are introduced and evaluated by means of extensive simulations. Some additional enhancements are also discussed. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.