Approximate fair bandwidth allocation using multi-thresholds rate partitioning scheme

Per-flow queueing and dropping disciplines protect well-behaved flows from misbehaving ones to achieve fair bandwidth allocation. These mechanisms involve more complicated implementations. While FIFO scheduling is simple, it does not provide flow protection. We propose a multi-thresholds rate partitioning (MTRP) algorithm to reduce complexity and to approximate fair bandwidth sharing. It divides the output link of a router into partitions; each has packet counters with predefined thresholds. Counters and thresholds are defined to penalize misbehaving flows by discarding packets. Simulations were carried out under different link and traffic environments, where MTRP has shown very promising results.