A framework to determine the optimal weight parameter of RED in next-generation Internet routers

Active buffer management can improve the performance of Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol-based networks. Random early detection (RED), an active queue management scheme, has been proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force for next-generation Internet routers. RED uses a number of parameters, such as buffer thresholds, a packet drop probability and a weight parameter. RED suffers from low throughput and large delay/jitter and induces instability in networks. Previous attempts to improve the performance of RED were based on modifying the thresholds and drop probabilities. In this paper, we show that an optimal value of the weight parameter can improve the performance of RED, and then develop a framework to determine the optimal value of the weight parameter. We show that the optimal weight parameter obtained from our framework improves the performance of RED. Copyright q 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.