A New Protocol for Bandwidth Regulation of Real-Time Traffic Classes in Internetworks - Distributed Computing Systems, 1995., Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on

A novel bandwidth regulation mechanism is proposed which improves the ability of a packet-switching network to cope with multiple real-time and non-real-time t ra f i c classes. The mechanism achieves regulation of link bandwidth ut two levels. At the j r s t level, bandwidth is dynamically regulated between different traf ic classes. The concept of ‘inter-class regulation’ is introduced which enforces that the bandwidth .left unused by a t ra f i c class is divided among t ra f i c classes with high bandwidth demands. A t the second level, bandwidth regulation is enforced on end-to-end t ra f i c streams, socalled flows, such that flows f rom the same class with identical routes have the same throughput constraints. This concept is referred to as ‘intra-class regulation’. A simple distributed protocol is presented that achieves intra-class and inter-class regulation in a general internetwork. The effectiveness of the protocol is demonstrated b y simulation experiments.