RATE Control for Bandwidth Allocated Services in IEEE 802.3 Ethernet

We investigate how to add rate control to full-duplex IEEE 802.3 Ethernet. We envision the need for rate control in order to enable bandwidth allocation in future Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) subscriber services. We propose a RATE mechanism that can be implemented with a simple byte-based leaky bucket. We demonstrate with simulation methods that RATE can isolate flows and provide lower loss and delay than no control or PAUSE control for misbehaving flows. We also show, using simulation models, that RATE and PAUSE can complement each other where a switch is RATE controlled and the sending source PAUSE controlled. An appendix gives a formal specification of RATE.