The present invention generally relates to telecommunications systems and more specifically to methods and apparatus for applying a level of service for data packets based on a subscriber associated with each packet.
When a subscriber is offered data services, the limits of a physical connection determine a data rate that may be offered to the subscriber. For example, the physical connection may be based on an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) port, a digital subscriber line (DSL) connection, a direct physical connection, a neighborhood aggregator, etc. Each different physical connection may be able to transfer data at a certain data rate. The data rate offered to a subscriber is not a guaranteed rate but rather a maximum rate that data may be transferred through the physical connection.
Typically, multiple subscribers transfer data through the same physical connection. Data packets from different subscribers are not handled differently by devices routing the data for the connection. Rather, data packets from the same connection, no matter where they originated from, are transferred according to the physical limitations of the connection.
Different subscribers may be running different types of applications. For example, one subscriber may need a connection to download and view a video on demand movie. Another subscriber may want to browse the World Wide Web (WWW). Each of the subscribers will most likely desire a different data rate for their data traffic. For example, the subscriber using video on demand will most likely desire a high data transfer rate while the subscriber browsing the World Wide Web may not need such a high data rate. However, data packets are transferred at the same data rate for the two subscribers in the connection. Thus, available bandwidth in the connection may not satisfy the video on demand subscriber because data packets from the other subscriber are being given the same priority as data from the video on demand movie. Moreover, the subscriber browsing the WWW may have his or her data transfer rate degraded because the video on demand subscriber has used up most of the bandwidth for the physical connection. Accordingly, different subscribers on the same connection may not have their bandwidth needs met.