Assured forwarding fairness using equation-based packet marking and packet separation

Fairness is one of the important problems in assured forwarding (AF) performance in the differentiated services (DiffServ) framework [An architecture for differentiated services, RFC 2475, IETF, December 1998; A two-bit differentiated services architecture for the Internet, Internet-draft, draft-nichols-diff-svc-arch-02.pdf, IETF, April 1999]. In this paper we present a two-part solution for the fairness problem in AF. The first part is a new packet marking algorithm called equation-based marking (EBM) and is based on the TCP model given by Padhye et al. [Modeling TCP throughput: A simple model and its empirical validation, in: Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM ’98, October 1998]. EBM is to handle the problems found in other marking schemes regarding fairness among heterogeneous TCP flows through a tight feedback-loop operation and adaptation of the packet marking probability to network conditions. The second part is called packet separation used at routers to handle the fairness between responsive and non-responsive traffic. We evaluate the performance of a packet marker that uses EBM as the marking algorithm using in-depth simulation. We prove, analytically and using simulation, the correctness of the marking algorithm and compare it with other marking schemes for different network scenarios. We also use simulation to show the effectiveness of the packet separation mechanism in solving the fairness problem between responsive and non-responsive traffic. Our evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness of EBM along with packet separation in providing the required fairness among heterogeneous flows and ensuring protection against non-assured traffic.