Analysis and implementation of a transparent priority mechanism for LAN Internet access

A method to transparently give different priority classes to different users in a LAN, so that some of these have higher possibility of accessing the Internet, has been studied, proposed and implemented. The priority classes have been chosen on the basis of the users needs, of the Internet access requests and of the delay to reach the final target. The priority system is based on a network agent which filters the traffic addressed to the router and sends it only the packets which satisfy the necessary priority requirements. Then, the packet flow control is made on the outgoing traffic, by limiting in a suitable way the requests to the router if they overcomes the available capacity. The system also performs the capability to control the incoming traffic flow by acting on the acknowledge signals.