Abstract: One embodiment of a queuing mechanism using an Accounting component 220 that applies previous state of a flow, along with usage policies, to determine if a packet is dropped or enqueued for transmission to an output interface. The decision process is done independent of the congestive state of the output interface. In addition, the rate of degradation or augmentation of a flow is divided into three phases: (1) an initial state upon which drop probability is increased or decreased, (2) a variable rate of degradation or augmentation, and (3) a maximum rate or threshold of augmentation or degradation. Finally, the design is based on soft state retention of information so that timeouts of activity allow the system to automatically clear state and start from a NULL or zero history.