Weighted proportional fair rate allocations in a differentiated services network

The differentiated services (Diffserv) architecture is a potential solution for providing quality of service (QoS) on the Internet. Most existing studies focus on providing service differentiation among few service classes. In this paper, we propose an approach which can achieve per-flow weighted fair rate allocation in a differentiated services network. Following the design philosophy of the Diffserv model, in the proposed approach core routers do not need to keep per-flow information. An edge router adjusts the transmission rate of a flow based on the feedback carried on control packets, which are inserted by the ingress edge router and returned by the egress edge router. Core routers periodically estimate the fair share rate of each virtual flow and mark the results in control packets. We use both simulations and analysis to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The analytical results show that our approach allows a system to converge to weighted fair rate allocations in limited time. Through the simulation results, we can further validate the analytical results, and demonstrate that better throughput can be achieved.