network reporting

Continuing the analogy of network reporting, DiffServ can be compared to different tiers of mail service, such as regular, registered, priority, and express mail. Each service offers particular parameters of delivery, and the piece of mail is stamped at each intermediate handling point to ensure that it gets the required service. However, there is no specific connection between the sender of the piece of mail and the treatment that the mail receives

The premise of DiffServ is very simple: It offers different network service levels to a packet, thereby "enable[ing] scalable service discrimination in the Internet without the need for per-flow state and signaling at every hop" (RFC 2474). Packets of a particular service belong to a particular "class," and the treatment of each "class" is described by PHBs with which the network node must comply. Meaningful services can be constructed by a combination of the network reporting