Augmented Hose-A Traffic specification Model for Metro Ethernet

There are currently two widely used traffic specification models: The pipe and hose models. The pipe model provides the most efficient interface for the provider in terms of bandwidth allocation. However, it suffers from being complex and it requires pair-wise traffic information from the customer; which can be very difficult to obtain. The hose model, on the other hand, does not require knowledge of pair-wise traffic, but only aggregates. In addition, it is easy to specify by the customer. However, the lack of exact traffic distributions makes it least efficient in terms of bandwidth allocation. To achieve a balance between the benefits of both the pipe and hose models, we introduce the augmented hose model for metro Ethernet networks