
80 Chapter 4: Per-Hop Behavior: Resource Allocation I
In general, WFQ limits its drops to the most active flows, whereas FIFO might drop from
any flow. Therefore, WFQ should encourage the most active flows to scale back without
affecting the smaller flows. Because the median flow duration in the Internet is 10–20
packets in length, a fairly small percentage of the flows should be taking the lion’s share of
the drops with WFQ, while FIFO drops should be distributed across all flows. Hence, the
effects of global synchronization with FIFO are less pronounced with WFQ for traffic with
adaptive flow control such as TCP traffic. Global synchronization and proacti ...