Statistical Guarantees for Streaming Flows Using Expedited Forwarding

Thomas Bonald, Alexandre Proutière, James W. Roberts

Abstract: We suggest that satisfactory statistical performance guarantees for streaming flows can be fulfilled when their packets receive expedited forwarding in non-preemptive priority queues. This relies on the conjecture that jitter remains negligible in the network such that performance measures can be bounded by assuming flows constitute Poisson arrival processes of maximum transfer unit (MTU) sized packets. We provide analytical and simulation evidence in support of this conjecture and show how it leads to simple engineering rules for both constant and variable rate streaming traffic.