Loose source routing as a mechanism for traffic policies

Internet packet delivery policies have been of concern since the earliest times of the Internet, as witnessed by the presence of the Type of Service (ToS) field in the IPv4 header. Efforts continue today with Differentiated Services (DiffServ) and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). We claim that these approaches have not succeeded because they require, either explicitly or subtly, a network-layer virtual circuit mechanism.In this paper, we describe how adding a form of Loose Source and Record Route (LSRR) capability into the next-generation Internet provides adequate support for transmit and receive policies, including filtering, while avoiding the problems of virtual circuits and the original problems with LSRR in IPv4.