RFC 3662 (rfc3662) - Page 1 of 17
A Lower Effort Per-Domain Behavior (PDB) for Differentiated Services
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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