A draft standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that defines ways that Internet service providers (ISPs) can deliver different traffic types to their clients and bill them accordingly. Provider Architecture for Differentiated Services and Traffic Engineering (PASTE) can be implemented without adding overhead to an ISP’s routers, whose tables are often burdened by the rapidly expanding address space of the Internet.
Existing technologies such as Cisco Systems’ tag switching require that routers maintain state information for every virtual circuit they detect. PASTE eases this requirement by aggregating traffic flows that share a common path into a trunk. Routers need only maintain tables of trunks instead of tables for virtual circuits, which greatly reduces router overhead.
Packets can then join or leave a trunk at any router. PASTE uses the Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) protocol and the Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) to provide these differentiated services.