Localized congestion exposure

A physical system, to be coupled in a cellular network, configured to perform localized congestion exposure for efficient resource management of flows of downlink traffic destined to a user device, the physical system comprising:

• an eNodeB to:
• receive the flows of the downlink traffic destined to the user device,
• forward the flows of the downlink traffic to the user device, wherein the user device does not support congestion exposure (CONEX),
• send congestion feedback that is indicative of a congestion caused by the flows of the downlink traffic in a local path within the cellular network between a packet data network gateway and the eNodeB, wherein the packet data network gateway is within a core network, and the core network and the eNodeB are part of the cellular network,
• cause an upstream node of the core network of the cellular network to declare, in response to the congestion feedback, CONEX information for the flows of the downlink traffic, and
• cause the packet data network gateway to monitor the CONEX information, wherein to monitor the CONEX information includes to monitor an Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) marking rate, and responsive to said monitoring, to act on the flows of the downlink traffic destined to the user device according to an operator's policy, wherein to act on the flows of the downlink traffic includes to detect based on the congestion feedback whether there is at least one of (a) a malicious flow, (b) a misbehaving user, (c) an aggressive source of traffic, and (d) an overloaded node in the network.

A non-transitory machine readable medium having stored thereon software, which when executed by a machine, causes the machine to perform the operations comprising:

• receiving, at an eNodeB, flows of downlink traffic destined to a user device;
• forwarding, from the eNodeB, the flows of the downlink traffic to the user device, wherein the user device does not support congestion exposure (CONEX);
• sending, from the eNodeB congestion feedback that is indicative of a congestion caused by the flows of the downlink traffic in a local path within a cellular network between a packet data network gateway and the eNodeB, wherein the packet data network gateway is within a core network, and the core network and the eNodeB are part of the cellular network;
• causing an upstream node of the core network of the cellular network to declare, in response to the congestion feedback, CONEX information for the flows of the downlink traffic;
• and
• causing the packet data network gateway to monitor the CONEX information, wherein to monitor the CONEX information includes to monitor an Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) marking rate, and responsive to said monitoring, to act on the flows of the downlink traffic destined to the user device according to an operator's policy, wherein to act on the flows of the downlink traffic includes to detect based on the congestion feedback whether there is at least one of (a) a malicious flow, (b) a misbehaving user, (c) an aggressive source of traffic, and (d) an overloaded node in the network.