On Determining the Fair Bandwidth Share for ABR Connections in ATM Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to accurately determine the number of active ABR connections in ATM networks, enabling fair and efficient bandwidth sharing, validated through analytical proofs and simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method for estimating active connections and fair bandwidth allocation in ATM ABR networks, improving upon existing techniques.

Findings

The method is proven to be fair and efficient analytically.

Simulation results demonstrate improved bandwidth allocation accuracy.

The approach integrates seamlessly with the ERICA switch algorithm.

Abstract

The ABR service is designed to fairly allocate the bandwidth unused by higher priority services. The network indicates to the ABR sources the rates at which they should transmit to minimize their cell loss. Switches must constantly measure the demand and available capacity, and divide the capacity fairly among the contending connections. In order to compute the fair and efficient allocation for each connection, a switch needs to determine the effective number of active connections. In this paper, we propose a method for determining the number of active connections and the fair bandwidth share for each. We prove the efficiency and fairness of the proposed method analytically, and simulate it by incorporating it into the ERICA switch algorithm.