Comments on the Usefulness of Simple Best-Effort Traffic

Metadata

Publisher: IETF
Doc Type: Informational
Pages: 20
Abstract: This document presents some observations on "simple best-effort traffic", defined loosely for the purposes of this document as Internet traffic that is not covered by Quality of Service (QOS) mechanisms, congestion-based pricing, cost-based fairness, admissions control, or the like. One observation is that simple best-effort traffic serves a useful role in the Internet, and is worth keeping. While differential treatment of traffic can clearly be useful, we believe such mechanisms are useful as *adjuncts* to simple best- effort traffic, not as *replacements* of simple best-effort traffic. A second observation is that for simple best-effort traffic, some form of rough flow-rate fairness is a useful goal for resource allocation, where "flow-rate fairness" is defined by the goal of equal flow rates for different flows over the same path. This memo provides information for the Internet community.
Publication Date: 2008-07-01
Status Note: Informational
DOI: 10.17487/RFC5290
Link: https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC5290
Author(s): Sally Floyd
Mark Allman
Keyword(s): Flow-rate Fairness

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Bibliographic Reference(s)

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IETF RFC 896 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 1958 [Active*]
IETF RFC 2212 [Active*]
IETF RFC 2309 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 2475 [Active*]
IETF RFC 2616 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 2914 [Active*]
IETF RFC 2990 [Active*]
IETF RFC 3124 [Active*]
IETF RFC 3662 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 3714 [Active*]
IETF RFC 5166 [Active*]

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IETF RFC 6077 [Active*]