On Fair Bandwidth Allocation in Connection-less Networks

We introduce a transport-independent mechanism for network-wide fair bandwidth allocation in the Internet based on a natural hierarchy of authorities. With our proposed approach, routers identify a dynamic set of so-called fluxes derived form descriptors (ranks) disseminated in the network in a hierarchical fashion. The scheme assumes no particular implementation of the sessions contributing to the fluxes: cooperation is simply in their best interest, as otherwise, their received bandwidth will be below the attainable fair share. We illustrate the behavior of our mechanism in a simulated environment and argue about its potential to solve many QoS problems that traditionally have been associated with call admission.