Configuration of DiffServ routers for high-speed links

The Internet is now widely expected to become an important communication infrastructure of society, and therefore it is no longer sufficient to simply be able to provide connections. A higher quality of service (QoS) in communications is increasingly being required. As a new framework for providing QoS services, DiffServ is undergoing a speedy standardization process at the IETF. DiffServ not only can offer a tiered level of services, but can also provide guaranteed QoS to a certain extent. In order to provide this QoS, however, DiffServ must be properly configured; to determine this proper configuration, a deeper understanding of DiffServ and its interaction with the different traffic types (specially TCP) is required. However, while much work in the past has focused on understanding the behavior of DiffServ with low-speed links, much less work has been invested for high-speed links. In this paper, we take up the subject of configuring high-speed DiffServ routers. We reuse previous work of the authors on DiffServ configuration and run an exhaustive set of simulations with high-speed links. We observe substantial differences in the resulting behavior with respect to previous work for low-speed links.