Controlling Queue Delay

The article aims to provide part of the buffer bloat solution, proposing an innovative approach to AQM suitable for today's Internet called CoDel. Packet networks require buffers to absorb short-term arrival rate fluctuations. Although essential to the operation of packet networks, buffers tend to fill up and remain full at congested links, contributing to excessive traffic delay and losing the ability to perform their intended function of absorbing bursts. The Internet has been saved from disaster by a constant increase in link rates and by usage patterns. Over the past decade, evidence has accumulated that this whistling in the dark cannot continue without severely impacting Internet usage. Developing effective active queue management has been hampered by misconceptions about the cause and meaning of queues. Network buffers exist to absorb the packet bursts that occur naturally in statistically multiplexed networks.