The cost of quality in networks of aggregate traffic

We relate burstiness (or indifference) curves for stochastic traffic flows to the quality they experience under the allocation of the resources of bandwidth and buffer space. We use this relation to explore the quality experienced by merged flows under various rules for allocating resources to them, including one motivated by the controlled load service specification. We show how cost structures on the resources can be used to encourage optimal use of shared resources amongst heterogeneous flows.