Abstract: Techniques described herein can enable proactive congestion notifications based on service level agreement (SLA) thresholds. The disclosed techniques can be performed at a network router device. The router can monitor network traffic performance measurements of network traffic associated with an SLA. The SLA can be associated with an SLA policy, and the SLA policy can comprise performance thresholds such as loss/latency/jitter thresholds, and a congestion notification policy. The congestion notification policy can comprise a portion, e.g., a fraction or percentage, applicable to the performance thresholds to determine congestion notification thresholds. The router can send a congestion notification in response to a network traffic performance measurement exceeding a congestion notification threshold.

Abstract: In one embodiment, a method includes receiving traffic and identifying one or more attributes associated with the traffic. The method also includes dynamically selecting a load balancing algorithm based on the one or more attributes in accordance with a load balancing scheme. The method further includes performing load balancing on the traffic in accordance with the load balancing algorithm and communicating the traffic from a first network element to a second network element in accordance with the load balancing.