Priority Queuing of Network Game Traffic over a DOCSIS Cable Modem Link

Despite the greater bandwidth available for home Internet users, network problems continue to surface with regard to the mix of network applications being run. The ease in which Internet sharing can be configured, coupled with the increase in the number of computers present in consumer residences, increase the likelihood that concurrent network applications will have to compete for access to a limited bandwidth resource. The performance of applications such as network games and VoIP is heavily dependent on transmission delays and packet loss rates, which can be improved through priority queuing at the Internet Access device to minimise the impact of queuing delay. In this paper we compare the performance of both regular TCP traffic and network game traffic competing for Internet bandwidth on a DOCSIS Cable Modem link to quantify the performance gain and loss of both applications in an environment where priority queuing is enabled for game traffic. Our results show that the decrease in queuing delay and packet loss rate experienced by game flows is significant in the case of prioritised queuing while the un-prioritised TCP flows experience a slight drop in network performance.