A New Approach for Asynchronous Distributed Rate Control of Elastic Sessions in Integrated Packet Networks

Pr. Anurag Kumar

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India


Résumé:

We develop a new class of asynchronous distributed algorithms for the explicit rate control of elastic sessions in an integrated packet network. Sessions can request for minimum guaranteed rate allocations (e.g., MCRs in the ATM context), and, under this constraint, we seek to allocate the max-min fair rates to the sessions. We capture the integrated network context by permitting the link bandwidths available to elastic sessions to be stochastically time varying. The available capacity of each link is viewed as some statistic of this stochastic process (e.g., a fraction of the mean, or a large deviations Equivalent Service Capacity (ESC)). For fixed available capacity at each link, we show that the vector of max-min fair rates can be computed from the root of a certain vector equation. A distributed asynchronous stochastic approximation technique is then used to develop a provably convergent distributed algorithm for obtaining the root of the equation, even when the link flows and the available capacities are obtained from on-line measurements. The switch algorithm does not require per connection monitoring, nor does it require per connection marking of control packets. A virtual buffer based approach for on-line estimation of the ESC is utilised. We also propose techniques for handling large variations in the available capacity owing to the arrivals or departures of CBR/VBR sessions. Finally, simulations results are provided to demonstrate the performance of this class of algorithms in the local and wide area network context.


[Pr. Anurag Kumar]
[Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India]