Drop strategies and loss-rate differentiation

When offering loss-rate differentiation in IP networks, the drop strategy used can have a considerable influence on packet loss and delay. In particular, a strategy of dropping packets only as they arrive can cause bursty loss patterns and high jitter. When only arriving packets are dropped, the router may need to wait for low priority packets to arrive before dropping any packet. This results in larger queue oscillation than if low priority packets were dropped immediately from the queue. Queue oscillation gives bursty loss patterns and delay jitter. We present simulations showing that dropping packets from the queue gives smoother loss patterns and less jitter than if packets are dropped only as they arrive. These simulations cover both TCP Sack and TCP Reno. WRED with and without the gentle modification is used to make drop decisions.