  In the current Internet architecture, a packet is a minimal or fundamental
unit upon which different actions such as classification,forwarding, or
discarding are performed by the network nodes.When faced with constrained or
poor network conditions, a packet is subjected to undesirable drops and
re-transmissions, resulting in unpredictable delays and subsequent traffic
overheads in the network. Alternately, we introduce qualitative communication
services which allow partial, yet timely, delivery of a packet instead of
dropping it entirely. These services allow breaking down packet payloads into
smaller units (called chunks), enabling much finer granularity of bandwidth
utilization.
  We propose Packet Wash as a new operation in forwarding nodes to support
qualitative services. Upon packet error or network congestion, the forwarding
node selectively removes some chunk(s)from the payload based on the
relationship among the chunks or the individual significance level of each
chunk. We also present a qualitative communication framework as well as a
Packet Wash directive implemented in a newly evolved data plane
technology,called Big Packet Protocol (BPP)

Networking and Internet Architecture