An Algorithm for Rate Allocation in a Packet-Switching Network With Feedback

As the speed and complexity of computer networks evolve, sharing network resources becomes increasingly important. thus, the issue of how to allocate the available bandwidth among the multitude of users needs to be addressed. Such allocation needs to be in some sense efficient and fair to different users. In this work the so-called maxmin fairness is chosen as the optimality criterion. The new distributed and asynchronous algorithm is suggested. The algorithm is shown to converge to the optimal rate allocation in a network with general topology under dynamic changes in the set of network users, individual user load and occasional route changes. An upper bound on convergence time is given. The algorithm is shown to be well-behaved in transience. Unlike previous work, the algorithm takes bandwidth consumed by feedback traffic into account. Further, an extension of the algorithm is suggested to address the problem of policing misbehaved users.