Active networks provide a programmable user-network interface that supports dynamic modification of the network's behavior. Network nodes, in addition to forwarding packets, perform customized computation on the messages flowing through them. Resources in an active network mainly comprise of CPU and bandwidth. An efficient allocation is required for the optimal utilization of the resources. In this paper, the resources are estimated using a smoothing technique and compared against the actual requirements. An algorithm is designed for the fair allocation of resources. A policy-based approach is also designed based on constraints related to resource requirements, which will ensure the overall QoS © 2006 IEEE.