A technique for random early drop (RED) with per-hop-behavior (PHB) biasing involves breaking RED parameters into queue-specific parameters and packet-specific parameters. Each queue has associated queue-specific parameters. Each packet has an associated traffic class. The packet-specific parameters are related to the traffic class of the packet. The queue-specific and packet-specific parameters are then both used in RED procedures, thereby providing a PHB bias from using packet-specific parameters. The technique provides for absolute queue size support that can be dynamically changed based upon available memory resource levels.