An API for advanced traffic control in Diffserv routers

Distributed per-flow admission control is a promising solution for Differentiated Services networks. Its deployment in DiffServ domains requires the ability to suitably configure, in each network router, low-level packet forwarding mechanisms, such as packet dropping algorithms driven by traffic measurements. In this paper we first show that performance effectiveness is achieved by means of non traditional configuration of the forwarding mechanisms. Hence, we propose a modular Application Program Interface that allows to flexibly and adaptively configure the forwarding/dropping behavior associated to a router's output queue, well beyond the traditional RED/RIO active queue management schemes. © 2003 by Springer Science+Business Media New York.