File formats:

Status:

INFORMATIONAL

Authors:

S. Floyd
M. Allman

Stream:

INDEPENDENT

Cite this RFC: TXT  |  XML  |   BibTeX

DOI:  10.17487/RFC5290

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Abstract

This document presents some observations on "simple best-effort traffic", defined loosely for the purposes of this document as Internet traffic that is not covered by Quality of Service (QOS) mechanisms, congestion-based pricing, cost-based fairness, admissions control, or the like. One observation is that simple best-effort traffic serves a useful role in the Internet, and is worth keeping. While differential treatment of traffic can clearly be useful, we believe such mechanisms are useful as *adjuncts* to simple best- effort traffic, not as *replacements* of simple best-effort traffic. A second observation is that for simple best-effort traffic, some form of rough flow-rate fairness is a useful goal for resource allocation, where "flow-rate fairness" is defined by the goal of equal flow rates for different flows over the same path. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

For the definition of Status, see RFC 2026.

For the definition of Stream, see RFC 8729.