Bulk data transport in a network

A network comprising:

• a plurality of interconnected network components, the plurality of network components including a plurality of routers, and whereby:
• a select network component of the plurality of network components encodes a first set of packets in accordance with a redundancy protocol to generate an encoded set of packets and associates the encoded set of packets with a select priority class, the redundancy protocol facilitating replication of data of a dropped packet of the encoded set of packets using redundancy encoding information of said dropped packet included in other packets of the encoded set of packets;
• and
• each router of at least a subset of the plurality of routers preferentially drops packets associated with the select priority class over packets associated with other priority classes.

In a network comprising a plurality of servers interconnected via a plurality of routers, a method comprising:

• routing packets associated with respective priority classes of a set of priority classes between the plurality of servers using the plurality of routers;
• encoding a set of packets for a bulk data transfer of data between servers based on a redundancy protocol to generate a set of encoded packets, the redundancy protocol facilitating regeneration of data of a dropped packet of the encoded set of packets using redundancy encoding information of said dropped packet included in other packets of the encoded set of packets;
• associating the packets of the set of encoded packets with a select priority class of the set of priority classes, the select priority class reserved for bulk data transfers;
• and
• transmitting the set of encoded packets from a first server to a second server via a subset of the plurality of routers, each router of the subset preferentially dropping packets associated with the select priority class in favor of packets associated with other priority classes of the set of priority classes.