End-to-end TCP performance of the couple CBM traffic conditioner and RIO buffer management in a three node topology

Abstract

Despite the abundant literature written about the AF PHB, no solution has been found to efficiently face up its two goals, assuring a minimum rate to the users and offering a fair distribution of the excess bandwidth if available. The Counters Based Modified (CBM) traffic conditioner, presented in a previous work, is able to achieve these objectives in single-node topologies. This paper raises issues with providing bandwidth assurance and spare bandwidth distribution for TCP flows in more complex topologies than usual. Simulation results explore the effect of target rates, round trip times, and efficiency of CBM when up to three network nodes implement service differentiation, including in some cases the coexistence of assured service and best-effort traffics.