Control of Congestion in High-Speed Networks

The problem of controlling congestion in high-speed communication networks is introduced. An easy-to-implement explicit rate congestion control algorithm is presented, and its stability properties are discussed. The algorithm is decentralized and is robust to network delays. Furthermore, it does not require per-flow information. It is shown that the network level implementation of this algorithm leads to a ``hybrid'' control system, whose analysis for stability presents challenges in a control context. A variant of the same algorithm is used in the paper to demonstrate the possibility of an Internet implementation using``marking'' with the proper choice of a rate update function.