Network Working Group R. Bless

Network Working Group R. Bless
Request for Comments: 3662 Univ. of Karlsruhe
Category: Informational K. Nichols
Consultant
K. Wehrle
Univ. of Tuebingen/ICSI
December 2003

A Lower Effort Per-Domain Behavior (PDB) for Differentiated Services

Status of this Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

This document proposes a differentiated services per-domain behavior
(PDB) whose traffic may be "starved" (although starvation is not
strictly required) in a properly functioning network. This is in
contrast to the Internet's "best-effort" or "normal Internet traffic"
model, where prolonged starvation indicates network problems. In
this sense, the proposed PDB's traffic is forwarded with a "lower"
priority than the normal "best-effort" Internet traffic, thus the PDB
is called "Lower Effort" (LE). Use of this PDB permits a network
operator to strictly limit the effect of its traffic on "best-
effort"/"normal" or all other Internet traffic. This document gives
some example uses, but does not propose constraining the PDB's use to
any particular type of traffic.

1. Description of the Lower Effort PDB

This document proposes a differentiated services per-domain behavior
[RFC3086] called "Lower Effort" (LE) which is intended for traffic of
sufficiently low value (where "value" may be interpreted in any
useful way by the network operator), in which all other traffic takes
precedence over LE traffic in consumption of network link bandwidth.
One possible interpretation of "low value" traffic is its low
priority in time, which does not necessarily imply that it is
generally of minor importance. From this viewpoint, it can be

Bless, et al. Informational [Page 1]

RFC 3662 Lower Effort PDB December 2003

considered as a network equivalent to a background priority for
processes in an operating system. There may or may not be memory
(buffer) resources allocated for this type of traffic.

Some networks carry traffic for which delivery is considered
optional; that is, packets of this type of traffic ought to consume
network resources only when no other traffic is present.
Alternatively, the effect of this type of traffic on all other
network traffic is strictly limited. This is distinct from "best-
effort" (BE) traffic since the network makes no commitment to deliver
LE packets. In contrast, BE traffic receives an implied "good faith"
commitment of at least some available network resources. This
document proposes a Lower Effort Differentiated Services per-domain
behavior (LE PDB) [RFC3086] for handling this "optional" traffic in a
differentiated services domain.

There is no intrinsic reason to limit the applicability of the LE PDB
to any particular application or type of traffic. It is intended as
an additional tool for administrators in engineering networks.

Note: where not otherwise defined, terminology used in this document
is defined as in [RFC2474].

2. Applicability

A Lower Effort (LE) PDB is for sending extremely non-critical traffic
across a DS domain or DS region. There should be an expectation that
packets of the LE PDB may be delayed or dropped when other traffic is
present. Use of the LE PDB might assist a network operator in moving
certain kinds of traffic or users to off-peak times. Alternatively,
or in addition, packets can be designated for the LE PDB when the
goal is to protect all other packet traffic from competition with the
LE aggregate, while not completely banning LE traffic from the
network. An LE PDB should not be used for a customer's "normal
internet" traffic, nor should packets be "downgraded" to the LE PDB
for use as a substitute for dropping packets that ought to simply be
dropped as unauthorized. The LE PDB is expected to be applicable to
networks that have some unused capacity at some times of day.

This is a PDB that allows networks to protect themselves from
selected types of traffic rather than giving a selected traffic
aggregate preferential treatment. Moreover, it may also exploit all
unused resources from other PDBs.

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3. Technical Specification

3.1. Classification and Traffic Conditioning

There are no required traffic profiles governing the rate and bursts
of packets beyond the limits imposed by the ingress link. It is not
necessary to limit the LE aggregate using edge techniques since its
PHB is configured such that packets of the aggregate will be dropped
in the network if no forwarding resources are available. The
differentiated services architecture [RFC2475] allows packets to be
marked upstream of the DS domain or at the DS domain's edge. When
packets arrive pre-marked with the DSCP used by the LE PDB, it should
not be necessary for the DS domain boundary to police that marking;
further (MF) classification for such packets would only be required
if there was some reason for the packets to be marked with a
different DSCP.

If there is not an agreement on a DSCP marking with the upstream
domain for a DS domain using the LE PDB, the boundary must include a
classifier that selects the appropriate LE target group of packets
out of all arriving packets and steers them to a marker that sets the
appropriate DSCP. No other traffic conditioning is required.

3.2. PHB configuration

Either a Class Selector (CS) PHB [RFC2474], an Experimental/Local Use
(EXP/LU) PHB [RFC2474], or an Assured Forwarding (AF) PHB [RFC2597]
may be used as the PHB for the LE traffic aggregate. This document
does not specify the exact DSCP to use inside a domain, but instead
specifies the necessary properties of the PHB selected by the DSCP.
If a CS PHB is used, Class Selector 1 (DSCP=001000) is suggested.

The PHB used by the LE aggregate inside a DS domain should be
configured so that its packets are forwarded onto the node output
link when the link would otherwise be idle; conceptually, this is the
behavior of a weighted round-robin scheduler with a weight of zero.

An operator might choose to configure a very small link share for the
LE aggregate and still achieve the desired goals. That is, if the
output link scheduler permits, a small fixed rate might be assigned
to the PHB, but the behavior beyond that configured rate should be
that packets are forwarded only when the link would otherwise be
idle. This behavior could be obtained, for example, by using a CBQ
[CBQ] scheduler with a small share and with borrowing permitted. A
PHB that allows packets of the LE aggregate to send more than the
configured rate when packets of other traffic aggregates are waiting
for the link is not recommended.

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If a CS PHB is used, note that this configuration will violate the
"SHOULD" of section 4.2.2.2 of RFC 2474 [RFC2474] since CS1 will have
a less timely forwarding than CS0. An operator's goal of providing
an LE PDB is sufficient cause for violating the SHOULD. If an AF PHB
is used, it must be configured and a DSCP assigned such that it does
not violate the "MUST" of paragraph three of section 2 of RFC 2597
[RFC2597] which provides for a "minimum amount of forwarding
resources".

4. Attributes

The ingress and egress flow of the LE aggregate can be measured but
there are no absolute or statistical attributes that arise from the
PDB definition. A particular network operator may configure the DS
domain in such a way that a statistical metric can be associated with
that DS domain. When the DS domain is known to be heavily congested
with traffic of other PDBs, a network operator should expect to see
no (or very few) packets of the LE PDB egress from the domain. When
there is no other traffic present, the proportion of the LE aggregate
that successfully crosses the domain should be limited only by the
capacity of the network relative to the ingress LE traffic aggregate.

5. Parameters

None required.

6. Assumptions

A properly functioning network.

7. Example uses

o Multimedia applications [this example edited from Yoram Bernet]:

Many network managers want to protect their networks from certain
applications, in particular, from multimedia applications that
typically use such non-adaptive protocols as UDP.

Most of the focus in quality-of-service is on achieving attributes
that are better than Best Effort. These approaches can provide
network managers with the ability to control the amount of
multimedia traffic that is given this improved performance with
excess relegated to Best Effort. This excess traffic can wreak
havoc with network resources even when it is relegated to Best
Effort because it is non-adaptive and because it can be
significant in volume and duration. These characteristics permit
it to seize network resources, thereby compromising the
performance of other, more important applications that are

Bless, et al. Informational [Page 4]

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included in the Best Effort traffic aggregate but that use
adaptive protocols (e.g., TCP). As a result, network managers
often simply refuse to allow multimedia applications to be
deployed in resource constrained parts of their network.

The LE PDB enables a network manager to allow the deployment of
multimedia applications without losing control of network
resources. A limited amount of multimedia traffic may (or may
not) be assigned to PDBs with attributes that are better than Best
Effort. Excess multimedia traffic can be prevented from wreaking
havoc with network resources by forcing it to the LE PDB.

o For Netnews and other "bulk mail" of the Internet.

o For "downgraded" traffic from some other PDB when this does not
violate the operational objectives of the other PDB or the overall
network. As noted in section 2, LE should not be used for the
general case of downgraded traffic, but may be used by design,
e.g., when multicast is used with a value-added DS-service and
consequently the Neglected Reservation Subtree problem [NRS]
arises.

o For content distribution, peer-to-peer file sharing traffic, and
the like.

o For traffic caused by world-wide web search engines while they
gather information from web servers.

8. Experiences

The authors solicit further experiences for this section. Results
from simulations are presented and discussed in Appendix A.

9. Security Considerations for LE PDB

There are no specific security exposures for this PDB. See the
general security considerations in [RFC2474] and [RFC2475].

10. History of the LE PDB

The previous name of this PDB, "bulk handling", was loosely based on
the United States' Postal Service term for very low priority mail,
sent at a reduced rate: it denotes a lower-cost delivery where the
items are not handled with the same care or delivered with the same
timeliness as items with first-class postage. Finally, the name was
changed to "lower effort", because the authors and other DiffServ
Working Group members believe that the name should be more generic in
order to not imply constraints on the PDB's use to a particular type

Bless, et al. Informational [Page 5]

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of traffic (namely that of bulk data).

The notion of having something "lower than Best Effort" was raised in
the Diffserv Working Group, most notably by Roland Bless and Klaus
Wehrle in their Internet Drafts [LBE] and [LE] and by Yoram Bernet
for enterprise multimedia applications. One of its first
applications was to re-mark packets within multicast groups [NRS].
Therefore, previous discussions centered on the creation of a new
PHB. However, the original authors (Brian Carpenter and Kathleen
Nichols) believe this is not required and this document was written
to specifically explain how to get less than Best Effort without a
new PHB.

11. Acknowledgments

Yoram Bernet contributed significant amounts of text for the
"Examples" section of this document and provided other useful
comments that helped in editing. Other Diffserv WG members suggested
that the LE PDB is needed for Napster traffic, particularly at
universities. Special thanks go to Milena Neumann for her extensive
efforts in performing the simulations that are described in Appendix
A.

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Appendix A. Experiences from a Simulation Model

The intention of this appendix is to show that a Lower Effort PDB
with a behavior as described in this document can be realized with
different implementations and PHBs respectively. Overall, each of
these variants show the desired behavior but also show minor
differences in certain traffic load situations. This comparison
could make the choice of a realization variant interesting for a
network operator.

A.1. Simulation Environment

The small DiffServ domain shown in Figure 1 was used to simulate the
LE PDB. There are three main sources of traffic (S1-S3) depicted on
the left side of the figure. Source S1 sends five aggregated TCP
flows (A1-A5) to the receivers R1-R5 respectively. Each aggregated
flow Ax consists of 20 TCP connections, where each aggregate
experiences a different round trip time between 10ms and 250ms.
There are two sources of bulk traffic. B1 consists of 100 TCP
connections sending as much data as possible to R6 and B2 is a single
UDP flow also sending as much as possible to R7.

...................
. . R1
. . /
. . /-R2
. . /
S1==**=>[BR1] [BR4]==**==>---R3
. \\ // . \
. \\ // . \-R4
. ** ** . \
. \\ // . R5
. \\ // .
S2=++=>[BR2]-++-[IR1]==**==++==::==[IR2] .
(Bulk) . // \\ .
. // :: .
. :: \\ .
. // ++ .
.// \\.
S3==::==>[BR3] [BR5]==++==>R6
(UDP) . . ||
. . ||
. . ::
.................... ||
VV
R7

Figure 1: A DiffServ domain with different flows

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In order to show the benefit of using the LE PDB instead of the
normal Best Effort (BE) PDB [RFC3086], different scenarios are used:

A) B1 and B2 are not present, i.e., the "normal" situation without
bulk data present. A1-A5 use the BE PDB.

B) B1 and B2 use the BE PDB for their traffic, too.

C) B1 and B2 use LE PDB for their traffic with different PHB
implementations:

1) PHB with Priority Queueing (PQ)
2) PHB with Weighted Fair Queueing (WFQ)
3) PHB with Weighted RED (WRED)
4) PHB with WFQ and RED

C1) represents the case where there are no allocated resources for
the LE PDB, i.e., LE traffic is only forwarded if there are unused
resources. In scenarios C2)-C4), a bandwidth share of 10% has been
allocated for the LE PDB. RED parameters were set to w_q=0.1 and
max_p=0.2. In scenario C2), two tail drop queues were used for BE
and LE and WFQ scheduling was set up with a weight of 9:1 for the
ratio of BE:LE. In scenario C3), a total queue length of 200000
bytes was used with the following thresholds: min_th_BE=19000,
max_th_BE=63333, min_th_LE=2346, max_th=7037. WRED allows to mark
packets with BE or LE within the same microflow (e.g., letting
applications pre-mark packets according to their importance) without
causing a reordering of packets within the microflow. In scenario
C4), each queue had a length of 50000 bytes with the same thresholds
of min_th=18000 and max_th=48000 bytes. WFQ parameters were the same
as in C2).

The link bandwidth between IR1 and IR2 is limited to 1200 kbit/s,
thus creating the bottleneck in the network for the following
situations. In all situations, the 20 TCP connections within each
aggregated flow Ax (flowing from S1 to Rx) used the Best Effort PDB.
Sender S2 transmitted bulk flow B1 (consisting of 100 TCP connections
to R6) with an aggregated rate of 550 kbit/s, whereas the UDP sender
S3 transmitted with a rate of 50 kbit/s.

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The following four different situations with varying traffic load for
the Ax flows (at application level) were simulated.

Situation | I | II | III | IV |
----------------------------+------+------+------+------|
Sender Rate S1 [kbit/s] | 1200 | 1080 | 1800 | 800 |
Sender Rate S2 [kbit/s] | 550 | 550 | 550 | 550 |
Sender Rate S3 [kbit/s] | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 |
Bandwidth IR1 -> IR2 | 1200 | 1200 | 1200 | 1200 |
Best Effort Load (S1) | 100% | 90% | 150% | 67% |
Total load for link IR1->IR2| 150% | 140% | 200% | 117% |

In situation I, there are no unused resources left for the B1 and B2
flows. In situation II, there is a residual bandwidth of 10% of the
bottleneck link between IR1 and IR2. In situation III, the traffic
load of A1-A5 is 50% higher than the bottleneck link capacity. In
situation IV, A1-A5 consume only 2/3 of the bottleneck link capacity.
B1 and B2 require together 50% of the bottleneck link capacity.

The simulations were performed with the freely available discrete
event simulation tool OMNeT++ and a suitable set of QoS mechanisms
[SimKIDS]. Results from the different simulation scenarios are
discussed in the next section.

A.2. Simulation Results

QoS parameters listed in the following tables are averaged over the
first 160s of the transmission. Results of situation I are shown in
Figure 2. When the BE PDB is used for transmission of bulk flows B1
and B2 in case B), one can see that flows A1-A5 throttle their
sending rate to allow transmission of bulk flows B1 and B2. In case
C1), not a single packet is transmitted to the receiver because all
packets get dropped within IR1, thereby protecting Ax flows from Bx
flows. In case C2), B1 and B2 consume all resources up to the
configured limit of 10% of the link bandwidth, but not more. C3)
also limits the share of B1 and B2 flows, but not as precisely as
with WFQ. C4) shows slightly higher packet losses for Ax flows due
to the active queue management.

Bless, et al. Informational [Page 9]

RFC 3662 Lower Effort PDB December 2003

+-------------------------+--------+-----------------------------------+
| | | Bulk Transfer with PDB: |
| QoS Parameter | A) | B) | C) Lower Effort |
| |No bulk | Best | 1) 2) 3) 4) |
| Flows |transfer|Effort| PQ | WFQ | WRED |RED&WFQ|
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 240 | 71 | 240 | 214 | 225 | 219 |
| | A2 | 240 | 137 | 240 | 216 | 223 | 218 |
| | A3 | 240 | 209 | 240 | 224 | 220 | 217 |
| Throughput | A4 | 239 | 182 | 239 | 222 | 215 | 215 |
| [kbit/s] | A5 | 238 | 70 | 238 | 202 | 201 | 208 |
| | B1 | - | 491 | 0 | 82 | 85 | 84 |
| | B2 | - | 40 | 0 | 39 | 31 | 38 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
|Total Throughput| normal | 1197 | 669 | 1197 | 1078 | 1084 | 1078 |
| [kbit/s] | bulk | - | 531 | 0 | 122 | 116 | 122 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 0 | 19.3 | 0 | 6.3 | 5.7 | 8.6 |
| | A2 | 0 | 17.5 | 0 | 6.0 | 5.9 | 8.9 |
| | A3 | 0 | 10.2 | 0 | 3.2 | 6.2 | 9.1 |
| Paket Loss | A4 | 0 | 12.5 | 0 | 4.5 | 6.6 | 9.3 |
| [%] | A5 | 0 | 22.0 | 0 | 6.0 | 5.9 | 9.0 |
| | B1 | - | 10.5 | 100 | 33.6 | 38.4 | 33.0 |
| | B2 | - | 19.6 | 100 | 19.9 | 37.7 | 22.2 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Total Packet | normal | 0 | 14.9 | 0 | 5.2 | 6.1 | 9.0 |
| Loss Rate [%] | bulk | 0 | 11.4 | 100 | 29.5 | 38.2 | 29.7 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Transmitted | | | | | | | |
| Data [MByte] | normal | 21.9 | 12.6 | 21.9 | 19.6 | 20.3 | 20.3 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+

Figure 2: Situation I - Best Effort traffic uses 100% of the
available bandwidth

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RFC 3662 Lower Effort PDB December 2003

Results of situation II are shown in Figure 3. In case C1), LE
traffic gets exactly the 10% residual bandwidth that is not used by
the Ax flows. Cases C2) and C4) show similar results compared to
C1), whereas case C3) also drops packets from flows A1-A5 due to
active queue management.

+-------------------------+--------+-----------------------------------+
| | | Bulk Transfer with PDB: |
| QoS Parameter | A) | B) | C) Lower Effort |
| |No bulk | Best | 1) 2) 3) 4) |
| Flows |transfer|Effort| PQ | WFQ | WRED |RED&WFQ|
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 216 | 193 | 216 | 216 | 211 | 216 |
| | A2 | 216 | 171 | 216 | 216 | 211 | 216 |
| | A3 | 216 | 86 | 216 | 216 | 210 | 216 |
| Throughput | A4 | 215 | 121 | 215 | 215 | 211 | 215 |
| [kbit/s] | A5 | 215 | 101 | 215 | 215 | 210 | 215 |
| | B1 | - | 488 | 83 | 83 | 114 | 84 |
| | B2 | - | 39 | 39 | 39 | 33 | 38 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
|Total Throughput| normal | 1078 | 672 | 1077 | 1077 | 1053 | 1077 |
| [kbit/s] | bulk | - | 528 | 122 | 122 | 147 | 122 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+----+-+-------+
| | A1 | 0 | 9.4 | 0 | 0 | 1.8 | 0 |
| | A2 | 0 | 14.6 | 0 | 0 | 2.0 | 0 |
| | A3 | 0 | 22.4 | 0 | 0 | 2.1 | 0 |
| Paket Loss | A4 | 0 | 15.5 | 0 | 0 | 1.8 | 0 |
| [%] | A5 | 0 | 17.4 | 0 | 0 | 1.9 | 0 |
| | B1 | - | 11.0 | 32.4 | 32.9 | 35.7 | 33.1 |
| | B2 | - | 21.1 | 20.3 | 20.7 | 34.0 | 22.2 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Total Packet | normal | 0 | 14.9 | 0 | 0 | 1.9 | 0 |
| Loss Rate [%] | bulk | - | 12.0 | 28.7 | 29.1 | 35.3 | 29.8 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Transmitted | | | | | | | |
| Data [MByte] | normal | 19.8 | 12.8 | 19.8 | 19.8 | 19.5 | 19.8 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+

Figure 3: Situation II - Best Effort traffic uses 90% of the
available bandwidth

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Results of simulations for situation III are depicted in Figure 4.
Due to overload caused by flows A1-A5, packets get dropped in all
cases. Bulk flows B1 and B2 nearly get their maximum throughput in
case B). As one would expect, in case C1) all packets from B1 and B2
are dropped, in cases C2) and C4) resource consumption of bulk data
is limited to the configured share of 10%. Again the WRED
implementation in C3) is not as accurate as the WFQ variants and lets
more BE traffic pass through IR1.

+-------------------------+--------+-----------------------------------+
| | | Bulk Transfer with PDB: |
| QoS Parameter | A) | B) | C) Lower Effort |
| |No bulk | Best | 1) 2) 3) 4) |
| Flows |transfer|Effort| PQ | WFQ | WRED |RED&WFQ|
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 303 | 136 | 241 | 298 | 244 | 276 |
| | A2 | 316 | 234 | 286 | 299 | 240 | 219 |
| | A3 | 251 | 140 | 287 | 259 | 236 | 225 |
| Throughput | A4 | 168 | 84 | 252 | 123 | 209 | 219 |
| [kbit/s] | A5 | 159 | 82 | 132 | 101 | 166 | 141 |
| | B1 | - | 483 | 0 | 83 | 73 | 83 |
| | B2 | - | 41 | 0 | 38 | 31 | 38 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
|Total Throughput| normal | 1199 | 676 | 1199 | 1079 | 1096 | 1079 |
| [kbit/s] | bulk | - | 524 | 0 | 121 | 104 | 121 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 9.6 | 17.6 | 12.1 | 9.3 | 8.6 | 12.8 |
| | A2 | 8.5 | 13.6 | 8.4 | 9.8 | 8.1 | 14.5 |
| | A3 | 8.8 | 18.7 | 7.7 | 11.6 | 7.8 | 13.6 |
| Paket Loss | A4 | 14.9 | 22.3 | 11.2 | 18.9 | 8.2 | 12.4 |
| [%] | A5 | 12.8 | 19.0 | 15.6 | 19.7 | 8.3 | 14.3 |
| | B1 | - | 11.9 | 100 | 32.1 | 39.5 | 33.0 |
| | B2 | - | 17.3 | 100 | 22.5 | 37.7 | 22.8 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Total Packet | normal | 10.4 | 17.3 | 10.3 | 12.2 | 8.2 | 13.4 |
| Loss Rate [%] | bulk | - | 12.4 | 100 | 29.1 | 39.0 | 29.9 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Transmitted | | | | | | | |
| Data [MByte] | normal | 22.0 | 12.6 | 22.0 | 20.2 | 20.6 | 20.3 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+

Figure 4: Situation III - Best Effort traffic load is 150%

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In situation IV, 33% or 400 kbit/s are not used by Ax flows and the
results are listed in Figure 5. In case B) where bulk data flows B1
and B2 use the BE PDB, packets of Ax flows are dropped, whereas in
cases C1)-C4) flows Ax are protected from bulk flows B1 and B2.
Therefore, by using the LE PDB for Bx flows, the latter get only the
residual bandwidth of 400 kbit/s but not more. Packets of Ax flows
are not affected by Bx traffic in these cases.

+-------------------------+--------+-----------------------------------+
| | | Bulk Transfer with PDB: |
| QoS Parameter | A) | B) | C) Lower Effort |
| |No bulk | Best | 1) 2) 3) 4) |
| Flows |transfer|Effort| PQ | WFQ | WRED |RED&WFQ|
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 160 | 140 | 160 | 160 | 160 | 160 |
| | A2 | 160 | 124 | 160 | 160 | 160 | 160 |
| | A3 | 160 | 112 | 160 | 160 | 160 | 160 |
| Throughput | A4 | 160 | 137 | 160 | 160 | 159 | 160 |
| [kbit/s] | A5 | 159 | 135 | 159 | 159 | 159 | 159 |
| | B1 | - | 509 | 361 | 362 | 364 | 362 |
| | B2 | - | 43 | 40 | 39 | 38 | 40 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
|Total Throughput| normal | 798 | 648 | 798 | 798 | 797 | 798 |
| [kbit/s] | bulk | - | 551 | 401 | 401 | 402 | 401 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| | A1 | 0 | 9.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| | A2 | 0 | 12.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| | A3 | 0 | 14.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Paket Loss | A4 | 0 | 9.3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| [%] | A5 | 0 | 6.6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| | B1 | - | 7.3 | 21.2 | 21.8 | 25.0 | 21.3 |
| | B2 | - | 14.3 | 19.4 | 20.7 | 24.5 | 20.7 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Total Packet | normal | 0 | 10.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Loss Rate [%] | bulk | - | 8.0 | 21.0 | 21.7 | 25.0 | 21.2 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+
| Transmitted | | | | | | | |
| Data [MByte] | normal | 14.8 | 12.1 | 14.8 | 14.8 | 14.7 | 14.7 |
+----------------+--------+--------+------+------+------+------+-------+

Figure 5: Situation IV - Best Effort traffic load is 67%

In summary, all the different scenarios show that the "normal" BE
traffic can be protected from traffic in the LE PDB effectively.
Either no packets get through if no residual bandwidth is left (LE
traffic is starved), or traffic of the LE PDB can only consume
resources up to a configurable limit.

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Furthermore, the results substantiate that mass data transfer can
adversely affect "normal" BE traffic (e.g., 14.9% packet loss in
situations I and II, even 10.2% in situation IV) in situations
without using the LE PDB.

Thus, while all presented variants of realizing the LE PDB meet the
desired behavior of protecting BE traffic, they also show small
differences in detail. A network operator has the opportunity to
choose a realization method to fit the desired behavior (showing this
is - after the proof of LE's efficacy - the second designation of
this appendix). For instance, if operators want to starve LE traffic
completely in times of congestion, they could choose PQ. This causes
LE traffic to be completely starved and not a single packet would get
through in case of full load or overload.

On the other hand, for network operators who want to permit some
small amount of throughput in the LE PDB, one of the other variants
would be a better choice.

Referring to this, the WFQ implementation showed a slightly more
robust behavior with PQ, but had problems with synchronized TCP
flows. WRED behavior is highly dependent on the actual traffic
characteristics and packet loss rates are often higher compared to
other implementations, while the fairness between TCP connections is
better. The combined solution of WFQ with RED showed the overall
best behavior, when an operator's intent is to keep a small but
noticeable throughput in the LE PDB.

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RFC 3662 Lower Effort PDB December 2003

Normative References

[RFC3086] Nichols, K. and B. Carpenter, "Definition of
Differentiated Services Per Domain Behaviors and Rules for
their Specification", RFC 3086, April 2001.

[RFC2474] Nichols, K., Blake, S., Baker, F. and D. Black,
"Definition of the Differentiated Services Field (DS
Field) in the IPv4 and IPv6 Headers", RFC 2474, December
1998.

[RFC2475] Blake, S., Black, D., Carlson, M., Davies, E., Wang, Z.
and W. Weiss, "An Architecture for Differentiated
Services", RFC 2475, December 1998.

Informative References

[RFC2597] Heinanen, J., Baker, F., Weiss, W. and J. Wroclawski,
"Assured Forwarding PHB Group", RFC 2597, June 1999.

[CBQ] Floyd, S. and V. Jacobson, "Link-sharing and Resource
Management Models for Packet Networks", IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 365-386,
August 1995.

[LBE] Bless, R. and K. Wehrle, "A Lower Than Best-Effort Per-Hop
Behavior", Work in Progress, September 1999.

[LE] Bless, R. and K. Wehrle, "A Limited Effort Per-Hop
Behavior", Work in Progress, February 2001.

[SimKIDS] Wehrle, K., Reber, J. and V. Kahmann, "A simulation suite
for Internet nodes with the ability to integrate arbitrary
Quality of Service behavior", in Proceedings of
Communication Networks And Distributed Systems Modeling
And Simulation Conference (CNDS 2001), Phoenix (AZ), USA,
pp. 115-122, January 2001.

[NRS] Bless, R. and K. Wehrle, "Group Communication in
Differentiated Services Networks", in Proceedings of IEEE
International Workshop on "Internet QoS", Brisbane,
Australia, IEEE Press, pp. 618-625, May 2001.

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RFC 3662 Lower Effort PDB December 2003

Authors' Addresses

Roland Bless
Institute of Telematics, Universitaet Karlsruhe (TH)
Zirkel 2
76128 Karlsruhe
Germany

EMail: [email protected]
URI: http://www.tm.uka.de/~bless/

Kathleen Nichols
325M Sharon Park Drive #214
Menlo Park, CA 94025

EMail: [email protected]

Klaus Wehrle
University of Tuebingen, Computer Networks and Internet
Morgenstelle 10c, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany &
International Computer Science Institute (ICSI)
1947 Center Street, Berkeley, CA, 94704, USA

EMail: [email protected]
URI: http://net.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de/~wehrle/

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RFC 3662 Lower Effort PDB December 2003

Full Copyright Statement

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Acknowledgement

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