[rfc-dist] RFC 5290 on Comments on the Usefulness of Simple Best-Effort Traffic

A new Request for Comments is now available in online RFC libraries.

        RFC 5290

        Title:      Comments on the Usefulness of 
                    Simple Best-Effort Traffic 
        Author:     S. Floyd, M. Allman
        Status:     Informational
        Date:       July 2008
        Mailbox:    floyd at icir.org, 
                    mallman at icir.org
        Pages:      20
        Characters: 48612
        Updates/Obsoletes/SeeAlso:   None

        I-D Tag:    draft-floyd-tsvwg-besteffort-03.txt

        URL:        http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5290.txt

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.

INFORMATIONAL: This memo provides information for the Internet community.
It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
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