BITAG Announces Technical Review Focused on Prioritization and Differentiated Treatment of Internet Traffic

BITAG Announces Technical Review Focused on 

Prioritization and Differentiated Treatment of Internet Traffic

Technical report will explore the technical aspects and uses of prioritization and differentiation

Denver, CO (April 14, 2015):   The Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG) is pleased to announce a technical review focused on the topic of prioritization and differentiated treatment of Internet traffic. This topic was submitted to BITAG’s technical working group by DISH, a founding member of BITAG. The review will result in a report with an anticipated publication date in August 2015. 

Differentiation of Internet network traffic on both wireline and wireless networks is a topic of continued interest among policymakers and the public alike. Significantly, the public discourse reflects a lack of clarity as to how traffic differentiation can be accomplished from both a technical perspective and as part of network management practices. To help inform the policy debate surrounding the technical aspects of prioritization and differentiation, BITAG’s technical working group will issue a report that describes the various methods and techniques used by network operators to differentiate Internet data traffic — as well as the impact these methods may have on different types of applications. The group will also explore the distinction between prioritized and differential treatment of traffic. Finally, the report will describe appropriate best practices as identified by the group.

Fred Baker, a Fellow at Cisco, and Ken Ko, Senior Staff Scientist at ADTRAN, will be the lead editors of the report on this topic. Douglas Sicker, Executive Director of BITAG, Chair of BITAG’s Technical Working Group, Department Head of Engineering and Public Policy and a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, will chair the review itself. 

This will be BITAG’s eighth technical review and report. BITAG’s previous reports have focused on: Internet interconnection; VoIP impairment, failure, and restrictions; Real-time network management of Internet congestion; Port blocking; SNMP DDOS attack mitigation; Large scale network address translation; and IPv6 whitelisting. Copies of these technical reports can be on the BITAG website at www.bitag.org.