An Integrated Framework for Managing Best Effort Traffic in MPLS Networks

This paper presents a scalable and flexible system for explicit rate congestion control in multi-protocol label switched networks. Resource reservation protocol is used to signal explicit rate congestion control information for best effort label switched paths. We present a weight proportional max-min fair rate algorithm that works with the signaling mechanism to calculate differentiated fair rates in O(1) time. We propose a method for marking traffic that is above the explicit rate as less than best effort allowing bursty traffic to utilize excess capacity while ensuring all label switched paths get a fair allocation of bandwidth. Simulations are presented that show the effectiveness of the proposed system.