This thesis addresses loss-rate differentiation in the Internet. Loss-rate differentiation can be offered by tagging packets with different levels of drop precedence. Multiple drop precedence levels can be used to provide relative service levels and to assure forwarding capacity in the Internet.
Assured services offer forwarding qualities known beforehand.
This makes them more predictable than relative services. Users are assumed to explicitly request an assured service from their network provider for traffic up to a specified rate. With relative service levels, users switch between these levels to find one that provides an appealing balance between forwarding quality and cost. Sheltering means that traffic at a low drop precedence level is protected from losses caused by traffic at higher levels. Such protection is required for assured services.