Achieving endpoint isolation by fairly sharing bandwidth

A computer system capable of performing load-balancing operations with respect to endpoints of a network that receive or originate data packets, the computer system comprising at least one physical machine configured with a computer-storage medium having a plurality of computer software components running thereon, the computer software components comprising:

• a traffic-monitoring component that abstracts a first level of bandwidth consumption of a first network endpoint and a second level of bandwidth consumption of a second network endpoint, wherein an aggregation of the first and second abstracted bandwidths is employed to detect a level of load on the network overall;
• an entity-designating component that dynamically classifies the first and second network endpoints using the first and second abstracted bandwidths, wherein classifying comprises:
• designating the first network endpoint as a small entity upon determining that the first level of bandwidth consumed by the first network endpoint is below an endpoint threshold;
• and
• designating the second network endpoint as a large entity upon determining that the second level of bandwidth consumed by the second network endpoint is above the endpoint threshold;
• and
• a load-balancing component configured to randomly drop data packets sent to or transmitted by the second network endpoint based on the second network endpoint being designated as the large entity, while refraining from dropping data packets being sent to or transmitted by the first network endpoint based on the first network endpoint being designated as the small entity, upon identifying the detected level of load on the network overall exceeds a first network threshold, wherein the load-balancing component increases or decreases a rate at which the data packets are randomly dropped upon recognizing an increase or decrease in a level of bandwidth consumed by the second network endpoint.

A computerized method for limiting a rate of data packets flowing to or from endpoints of a network that are consuming an elevated amount of available bandwidth, the method comprising:

• determining that overall network capacity of the network is exceeded based on comparing an aggregation of the available bandwidth being consumed by the network endpoints against a first network threshold;
• and
• in response to the determining that the overall network capacity of the network is exceeded, performing the procedures comprising:
• dropping one or more of the data packets being conveyed to large entities within the network, wherein the large entities represent one or more of the network endpoints presently experiencing a high rate of traffic of the data packets;
• and
• refraining from dropping one or more of the data packets being conveyed to small entities within the network, wherein the small entities represent one or more of the network endpoints presently experiencing a low rate of traffic of the data packets.