Improving fairness in a WRED-based DiffServ network: A fluid-flow approach

Abstract

The DiffServ architecture has been proposed as a scalable approach for upgrading the Internet, adding service differentiation functionalities. However, several aspects of this architecture still have to be analyzed and solved. For this reason, network designers need to be provided with tools which are able to estimate the average behavior of a DiffServ network with a high level of accuracy and in a short time. In this paper a fluid-flow model of a DiffServ network supporting Assured Forwarding Per-Hop Behavior (PHB) and loaded with TCP flows is proposed. At the edge of the network, two rate three color markers (TRTCM) are employed as profile meters, while within the network core routers implement a Weighted RED (WRED) buffer management mechanism. In order to demonstrate the high accuracy of the proposed model, a comparison between model and simulation results is performed, taking into account not just a bottleneck link, but a complex network topology. The proposed analytical framework is then used to analyze the impact of several factors on the fair sharing of network resources between traffic aggregates with the same traffic profile, and to achieve some guidelines for WRED parameter settings with the aim of reducing unfairness.