AN ENHANCED TOKEN BUCKET MARKER FOR DIFFSERV NETWORKS

Abstract

The DiffServ architecture has been widely accepted as a scalable framework for providing Quality of Service in the Internet. However there are still some limitations such as the inability of TCP aggregates to reach their guaranteed rates, within some Per-Hop-Behaviors proposed for use in DiffServ. We propose an enhanced token bucket marker, that is simple, efficient and effective compared to other proposed schemes, in realizing throughput guarantees of TCP aggregates. We achieve this by holding packets up to a threshold, in the absence of tokens. The required provisioning for holding packets in order to realize guaranteed rates is a linear function of guaranteed rates rather than quadratic if relied on tokens alone. We provide a theoretical analysis and simulation studies that support this claim.