A new protocol for bandwidth regulation of real-time traffic classes in internetworks

A novel bandwidth regulation mechanism is proposed which improves the ability of a packet-switching network to cope with multiple real-time and non-real-time traffic classes. The mechanism achieves regulation of link bandwidth at two levels. At the first level, bandwidth is dynamically regulated between different traffic classes. The concept of 'inter-class regulation' is introduced which enforces that the bandwidth left unused by a traffic class is divided among traffic classes with high bandwidth demands. At the second level, bandwidth regulation is enforced on end-to-end traffic streams, so-called flows, such that flows from the same class with identical routes have the same throughput constraints. This concept is referred to as 'intra-class regulation'. A simple distributed protocol is presented that achieves a intra-class and inter-class regulation in a general internetwork. The effectiveness of the protocol is demonstrated by simulation experiments.