Random Early Marking: Improving TCP performance in DiffServ assured forwarding

In the context of Active Queue Management, intelligent dropping algorithms have been proposed to achieve a better link utilization with TCP. In this paper we apply this research to the problem of achieving a better utilization of a customer's contracted throughput when it is sending a TCP traffic aggregate. We propose a scheme, Random Early Marking (REM)(1), that improves the throughput of a TCP aggregate by early marking some packets as out. The proper configuration of REM has been analyzed from a control theoretical standpoint. Simulation results show that REM leads to a significant improvement in a wide range of environments.