DIFFERENTIATED SERVICES IN PACKET-SWITCHED NETWORKS

Internet protocol based transmissions have historically been transmitted on a best efforts basis. There are proposals to provide differentiated services to allow different packets to be delivered with different service qualities depending on the bandwidth requirements of a particular flow. By performing bandwidth monitoring within the core network and performing packet dropping and/or queuing at the network ingress, the need for packet dropping and/or queuing within the core network is removed and furthermore the core network resources are not used by packets which will not be delivered to their destination but will instead be dropped within the core network.