A new direction for quality of service: flow-aware networking

In this paper we present the architectural implications of flow-aware networking, or FAN, a new approach for realizing QoS guarantees. FAN performs traffic control based on user-defined flows using implicit admission control and per-flow scheduling. This allows adequate performance guarantees for streaming and elastic flows without requiring class of service distinction or relying on signalled traffic specifications. We argue that FAN is a new direction for Internet quality of service that is arguably necessary as an alternative to flawed classical architectures and sufficient to meet user performance requirements in a cost-effective way.