RFC 3662 (rfc3662) - Page 1 of 17

A Lower Effort Per-Domain Behavior (PDB) for Differentiated Services

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Network Working Group                                           R. Bless
Request for Comments: 3662                            Univ. of Karlsruhe
Category: Informational                                       K. Nichols
                                                              Consultant
                                                               K. Wehrle
                                                 Univ. of Tuebingen/ICSI
                                                           December 2003


  A Lower Effort Per-Domain Behavior (PDB) for Differentiated Services

Status of this Memo

   This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
   not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
   memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document proposes a differentiated services per-domain behavior
   (PDB) whose traffic may be "starved" (although starvation is not
   strictly required) in a properly functioning network.  This is in
   contrast to the Internet's "best-effort" or "normal Internet traffic"
   model, where prolonged starvation indicates network problems.  In
   this sense, the proposed PDB's traffic is forwarded with a "lower"
   priority than the normal "best-effort" Internet traffic, thus the PDB
   is called "Lower Effort" (LE).  Use of this PDB permits a network
   operator to strictly limit the effect of its traffic on "best-
   effort"/"normal" or all other Internet traffic.  This document gives
   some example uses, but does not propose constraining the PDB's use to
   any particular type of traffic.

1.  Description of the Lower Effort PDB

   This document proposes a differentiated services per-domain behavior
   [RFC 3086] called "Lower Effort" (LE) which is intended for traffic of
   sufficiently low value (where "value" may be interpreted in any
   useful way by the network operator), in which all other traffic takes
   precedence over LE traffic in consumption of network link bandwidth.
   One possible interpretation of "low value" traffic is its low
   priority in time, which does not necessarily imply that it is
   generally of minor importance.  From this viewpoint, it can be





Bless, et al.                Informational
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