Computer Communication Review 38:3 (2008) 51-62.
In this paper, we develop a variant of RCP (rate control protocol) that achieves alpha-fairness when buffers are small, including proportional fairness as the case alpha = 1. At the level of theoretical abstraction treated, our model incorporates a general network topology, and heterogeneous propagation delays. For our variant of the RCP algorithm, we establish a simple decentralized sufficient condition for local stability. An outstanding question for explicit congestion control is whether the presence of feedback based on queue size is helpful or not, given the presence of feedback based on rate mismatch. We show that, for the variant of RCP considered here, feedback based on queue size may cause the queue to be less accurately controlled.
A further outstanding question for explicit congestion control is the scale of the step-change in rate that is necessary at a resource to accommodate a new flow. We show that, for the variant of RCP considered here, this can be estimated from the aggregate flow through the resource, without knowledge of individual flow rates.
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