Robust Control and Rate Coordination for Efficiency and Fairness
in ABR Traffic with Explicit Rate Marking
Abstract
The problem of efficiency and fairness of Available Bit Rate (ABR)
traffic with explicit rate marking is investigated from a control
point of view. It is revealed that due to significant uncertainty on
time delays in ABR traffic and strong interaction among switches, ABR
traffic imposes a great challenge to control strategy development.
Focusing on robustness of congestion control and asymptotic fairness,
we propose a new control strategy that employs robust control to
accommodate delay uncertainty and rate coordination for fairness.
Interaction between these two control actions leads to a non-standard
multi-objective control problem. Overall stability of the system and
convergence to fairness are rigorously analyzed. Conditions are
presented under which robust stability and convergence are
guaranteed. Simulation tests are then performed to demonstrate that a
redesign of feedback controllers may become necessary to satisfy these
conditions.
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Last updated by Loren Schwiebert Email: 
on Mar-22-2002