Open loop schemes for network congestion control

Open loop control schemes for network congestion avoidance in high-speed broadband networks are considered. A framework to study open loop congestion control schemes is presented. A new class of open loop schemes is derived which gives insight into the structure of optimal open loop schemes. This scheme is based on the structure of optimal closed loop controls. The performance of the optimal control in the new class of open loop controls is compared to that of the leaky bucket. The performance of the new scheme is quite close to that of the leaky bucket. This provides some evidence that the leaky bucket is a reasonable approximation to the optimal open loop control for the model considered here, which in turn helps characterize the performance of the leaky bucket scheme among the class of open loop schemes.<<ETX>>