RCS: A Rate Control Scheme for Real-Time Traffic in Networks with High Bandwidth-Delay Products and High Bit Error Rates

Currently there is no control for real-time traffic sources in IP networks. This is a serious problem because real-time traffic can not only congest the network but can also cause unfairness and starvation of TCP traffic. In this paper, a new rate control scheme, RCS, is introduced for real-time traffic in networks with high bandwidth-delay products and high bit error rates. RCS is based on the concept of using dummy packets to probe the availability of network resources. Dummy packets are treated as low priority packets and consequently they do not affect the throughput of actual data traffic. Therefore, RCS requires all the routers in the connection path to support some priority policy. Simulation experiments show that in environments with high bandwidth-delay products and high bit error rates, RCS achieves good throughput performance without penalizing TCP connections.