System and method for providing quality of service to data center applications by controlling the rate which data packets are transmitted

A method, comprising:

• accepting, by a bandwidth (BW) management system on behalf of a receiving host, data packets for a first individual flow at a flow rate sent by a sending host, the bandwidth management system configured to manage bandwidth by traffic classes representing collections of flows associated with nodes in a hierarchical bandwidth (HBT), the first individual flow is included within the collection of individual flows associated with one or more of the traffic classes;
• controlling, using a processor of a machine, by the BW management system the rate at which the sending host is transmitting the data packets for the first individual flow using a sliding window protocol by managing bandwidth allocation of the individual flows associated with traffic classes based on application priority classifications assigned to the individual flows in the collection of individual flows associated with the traffic classes;
• and
• receiving the data packets for the first individual flow at an adjusted flow rate based on the sliding window protocol.