An implication of pricing on the transmission of rate-regulated, variable bit-rate traffic

We consider an integrated-services communication network handling, in particular, best-effort data traffic and rate-regulated, delaysensitive variable bit-rate (VBR) traffic. From the user’s perspective, the pricing mechanism of the network may provide an incentive for the user to transmit best-effort packets in the real-time VBR channel, i.e., transmit best-effort packets “in-band” using some of the spare capacity of the channel. This can be done without affecting the received quality of service (QoS) of the delay-sensitive VBR traffic. Also, the allowable amount of data transmitted in-band can be quantified. The network itself can also use this approach to move best-effort packets using spare capacity of VBR channels without relying on complex (and possibly measurement-based) mechanisms to exploit “statistical multiplexing” of such connections. The mechanism used in the proposed approach is part of the standard network policing device.