A Rate Based Back-Pressure Flow Control for the Internet

The Internet has traditionally relied on end-to-end congestion control performed at the transport layer by TCP. In this paper, we discuss the limitations of this approach to address the large number of ows and the large delay-bandwidth product scenarios typical of next generation Internets. As a result, we propose a link layer back-pressure ow control which can be applied to Internet backbones over ATM. More precisely, we use the ABR service and ow control, where routers become virtual sources (VSs) and virtual destinations (VDs) for the ABR control loop. We introduce a VS/VD \behavior" that implements a rate based back-pressure ow control and that addresses max-min fairness. Finally, for the case of edge router connectivity to the ATM network (as opposed to ATM all the way to the host), we discuss approaches that can be used to convey ATM rate control indications to TCP sources connected to legacy LANs.