Correcting uncooperative flows: A time-scale separation design

In a network which does not differentiate among users, the equilibrium rate for any user is primarily decided by the congestion control being used. By changing their congestion control schemes, “uncooperative” users can gain more than their fair share of bandwidth, at the cost of cooperative users. We present a control-theoretic algorithm to counteract uncooperative users by adjusting the prices fed back to them. This algorithm is implemented at the edge of the network (e.g. by ISPs), and can be used with any congestion notification policy deployed by the network. Our design achieves a separation of time-scales between the network congestion feedback loop and the price-adjustment loop, thus recovering the fair allocation of bandwidth upon a fast transient phase.