Resource Allocation between Persistent and Transient Flows

  • Soumyajit Deb ,
  • Ayalvadi Ganesh ,
  • Peter Key

IEEE/ACM Trans. Networking, Networking 2002 |

Published by Springer

Publication

The flow control algorithms currently used in the Internet have been tailored to share bandwidth between users on the basis of the physical characteristics of the network links they use rather than the characteristics of their applications. This can result in a perception of poor quality of service by some users even when adequate bandwidth is potentially available, and is the motivation for seeking to provide differentiated services. In this paper, stimulated by current discussion on Web mice and elephants, we explore service differentiation between persistent and short-lived flows, and between file transfers of different sizes. In particular, we seek to achieve this using decentralized algorithms that can be implemented by end-systems without requiring the support of a complex network architecture. The algorithms we propose correspond to a form of weighted processor sharing and can be tailored to approximate the shortest remaining processing time service discipline.