Intelligent Flow Control Technique of ABR Service in ATM Networks Based on Fuzzy Neural Networks

ＩｎｔｅｌｉｇｅｎｔＦｌｏｗＣｏｎｔｒｏｌＴｅｃｈｎｉｑｕｅｏｆＡＢＲＳｅｒｖｉｃｅｉｎＡＴＭＮｅｔｗｏｒｋｓＢａｓｅｄｏｎＦｕｚｚｙＮｅｕｒａｌＮｅｔｗｏｒｋｓ①ＺｈａｎｇＬｉａｎｇｊｉｅＬｉＹａｎｄａＬｉＱｉｎｇｈｕａＷａｎｇＰｕ（ＤｅｐｔｏｆＡ...     

ABR业务流量控制的一种智能机制

本文提出了一种ＡＢＲ业务模糊流量控制机制,仿真结果表明它有效地避免了网络阻塞,在网络的吞吐量上要高于强比例速率控制算法（ＥＰＲＣＡ）。该机制与连接业务的特性无关,且不需要改变有关ＡＢＲ闭环反馈的流量控制结构,这为算法的实际应用提供了前提。     

Evaluation of congestion control protocols for ABR traffic over ATM networks

Congestion control is very important for effective and stable operation of ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks. Owing to the bursty and unpredictable characteristic of data network traffic, its congestion control is particularly a challenge for network researchers and designers. The ATM Forum has recently adopted rate‐based congestion control for ABR (Available Bit‐Rate) traffic which is the service class defined for data network applications. However, there is a number of congestion control schemes prevalent. ATM Forum has decided not to specify switch behaviour for ABR traffic; this has further introduced additional ambiguity. Consequently, an evaluation and comparison of the existing protocols would provide valuable guidance for network designers and engineers; it would also give insight for researchers to explore the essence of different congestion control schemes. In the first part of this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of ABR congestion control in the presence of bursty source traffic and the relationship between the burst time scale and the ABR control time scale. Two ABR congestion control schemes, the ABR Explicit Forward Congestion Indication (EFCI) and ABR Congestion Indication (CI) schemes, are compared with Unspecified Bit Rate (UBR) transport which makes no effort to control congestion. Traffic sources of various burst lengths of 100, 1000, 10000, and an equal mix of 100 and 10000 ATM cells are used in simulations. It is found that ABR congestion control schemes effectively control low frequency, medium to long‐term traffic load transients. This is further supported by the result of integrating TCP over ATM congestion control schemes included in the paper. ABR control schemes do not control high frequency, short‐term load transients well, but ABR control is not necessary in such cases since short‐term transients do not require a large amount of buffering. In the second part of this paper, we evaluate and compare six rate‐based congestion control protocols including Scheme I: EFCI, Scheme II: EFCI with separate RM queues, Scheme III: CI, Scheme IV: CI with separate RM queues, Scheme V: the CAPC2 ER (Explicit Rate), and Scheme VI: the EFCI with utilization‐based congestion indication. Each scheme is simulated and compared in the LAN, WAN, and GFC (General Fairness Configuration) environments specified by the ATM Forum. Effects of varying VC (Virtual Circuits) number and changing endsystem–switch distance has been investigated. Their fairness is also compared using the GFC configuration. We have found that ER control scheme performs significantly better than the other five binary control schemes by its faster response to congestion, smoother regulation of bit‐rates, lower queueing delay, shorter buffer queue length, and fairness. Among the other five schemes, the CI scheme performs better than the EFCI scheme. Providing separate RM queues has significantly improved the EFCI scheme in the WAN environment, but has little effect on the CI scheme. Link utilization‐based congestion detection has suffered from either low utilization or an excess cell loss which is unacceptable in most data applications. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On max-min fair congestion control for multicast ABR service in ATM

In the ATM Forum activities, considerable efforts have focused on the congestion control of point-to-point available bit rate (ABR) service. We present a novel approach that extends existing point-to-point (unicast) congestion control protocols to a point-to-multipoint (multicast) environment. In particular, we establish a unified framework to derive a multicast congestion control protocol for an ABR service from a given rate-based unicast protocol. We generalize a known necessary and sufficient condition on the max-min fairness of unicast rate allocation for a multicast service. Using this condition, we show that the resulting multicast protocol derived using our framework preserves the fairness characteristics of the underlying unicast protocol. The practical significance of our approach is illustrated by extending a standard congestion control mechanism for an ABR service to a multicast environment. The performance of the resulting multicast protocol is examined using benchmark network configurations suggested by the traffic management subworking group at the ATM Forum, and simulation results are presented to substantiate our claims     

ATM网中ABR业务及其反馈流量控制

ABR（AvailableBitRate）业务是近年来为了充分利用ATM网络的剩余带宽而提出的一种新型业务类型，自从1993年被ATM论坛正式提出以来得到了很快的发展。文章对该业务的特点和发展过程作了较全面的介绍，对该类型业务的流量控制方法作了比较深入的分析和研究，对流量控制中关键因素的改进提出了自己的见解。     

Design and evaluation of an efficient traffic control scheme for integrated voice,video, and data over asynchronous transfer mode networks: Explicit allowed rate algorithm

Asychronous transfer mode (ATM) networks are high‐speed networks with guaranteed quality of service. The main cause of congestion in ATM networks is over utilization of physical bandwidth. Unlike constant bit‐rate (CBR) traffic, the bandwidth reserved by variable bit‐rate (VBR) traffic is not fully utilized at all instances. Hence, this unused bandwidth is allocated to available bit‐rate (ABR) traffic. As the bandwidth used by VBR traffic changes, available bandwidth for ABR traffic varies; i.e., available bandwidth for ABR traffic is inversely proportional to the bandwidth used by the VBR traffic. Based on this fact, a rate‐based congestion control algorithm, Explicit Allowed Rate Algorithm (EARA), is presented in this paper. EARA is compared with Proportional Rate Control Algorithm (PRCA) and Explicit Rate Indication Congestion Avoidance Algorithm (ERICA), in both LAN and WAN environments. Simulations of all three algorithms are conducted under both congestion and fairness configurations with simultaneous generation of CBR, rt‐VBR, nrt‐VBR and ABR traffic. The results show that, with very small over‐head on the switch, EARA significantly decreases the required buffer space and improves the network throughput. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于星上处理的卫星ATM中ABR 业务拥塞控制算法研究

卫星ATM是近年来通信领域的研究热点,拥塞控制是其中很关键的一个问题.本文主要研究基于星上处理的卫星ATM网的ABR流量控制,它通过对流量的长时预测来达到控制目的.由于卫星信道的大延时,无法实现精确的长时预测,因而将预测结果直接用于ABR的拥塞控制效果不甚理想.将长时预测同动态利用因子控制的方法结合之后,在链路效率、信元丢失率、不同连接数目和暂态响应等方面都取得很好的结果.     

Evolution of controls for the available bit rate service

In the summer of 1993, the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) community began a search for a mechanism to allocate bandwidth dynamically within an ATM network, while simultaneously preventing data loss. By the fall of 1994, the ATM Forum had introduced a new service category for this purpose, the available bit rate (ABR) service, and had selected a rate-based mechanism for its support. Simply put, the mechanism would consist of a stream of ABR resource management (RM) cells, generated by one end of the connection (the source) and looped back by the other (the destination), into which switches would encode the maximum rate at which the ABR source was to generate data. The ABR service is an addition to ATM that uses a feedback mechanism to control the transmission rates of traffic sources. Although the performance of the ABR service will depend critically on the quality of feedback sent by switches, the algorithms for determining this feedback are largely outside the scope of ATM standards and specifications. We describe how two of the properties implemented by the ABR source and destination, out-of-rate RM cells and a use-it-or-lose-it policy, were implicitly architectural decisions, and we explain how and why the ATM Forum ultimately revised these decisions. We then discuss how the ATM Forum addressed the issues of conformance testing, point-to-multipoint connections, and parameter negotiation for the ABR service. At the end, we reflect on the process by which the ABR specification was developed     

Measured average cell rate‐based congestion avoidance scheme

Techniques for congestion control of available bit‐rate (ABR) traffic in ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks remain an important issue. Several congestion control schemes have been proposed to adjust the cell rates of sources with a modified or mean allowed cell rate. To make these schemes work effectively in practice, the modified or mean allowed cell rate must converge under all conditions. However, it is not easy to obtain an accurate value, and an inaccurate value could result in network performance degradation such as severe oscillations and considerable unfairness. Therefore, we propose a measured average cell rate‐based congestion avoidance for ABR traffic in ATM networks. The scheme has high throughput and achieves shorter queue lengths without congestion. With measured average cell rate, the scheme provides fast convergence to a start‐up virtual connection (VC) and rate of equalization from different initial conditions of the sources. Thus, this scheme provides better fairness among connections. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two-way TCP traffic over rate controlled channels: effects andanalysis

We study the performance of bidirectional TCP/IP connections over a network that uses rate-based flow and congestion control. An example of such a network is an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network using the available bit rate (ABR) service. The sharing of a common buffer by TCP packets and acknowledgment (acks) has been known to result in an effect called ack compression, where acks of a connection arrive at the source bunched together, resulting in unfairness and degraded throughput. It has been the expectation that maintaining a smooth flow of data using rate-based flow control would mitigate, if not eliminate, the various forms of burstiness experienced with the TCP window flow control. However, we show that the problem of TCP ack compression appears even while operating over a rate-controlled channel. The degradation in throughput due to bidirectional traffic can be significant. For example, even in the simple case of symmetrical connections with adequate window sizes, the throughput of each connection is only 66.67% of that under one-way traffic. By analyzing the periodic bursty behavior of the source IP queue, we derive estimates for the maximum queue size and arrive at a simple predictor for the degraded throughput, for relatively general situations. We validate our analysis using simulation on an ATM network using the explicit rate option of the ABR service. The analysis predicts the behavior of the queue and the throughput degradation in simple configurations and in more general situations     

A novel core‐stateless ABR‐like congestion avoidance scheme in IP networks

We propose a novel explicit rate‐based congestion avoidance scheme. The scheme is similar to ATM available bit rate (ABR) services but its complexity is largely reduced to enable implementation in IP networks. In our proposed scheme, sources can adapt their sending rate according to network status. Adaptation of sending rates converges to max–min fairness with minimal rate guarantee. Furthermore, routers do not maintain per flow state; they use FIFO packet scheduling enhanced by an explicit rate feedback mechanism with estimations, including number of active flows, number of bounded flows and total bounded rate, based on a simple algorithm motivated by Bloom filter. We present and discuss simulations on the performance under various network conditions. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fair packet discarding for controlling ABR traffic in ATM networks

The asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) Forum has chosen rate-based control as the flow control scheme for the available bit-rate (ABR) service. However, rate-based schemes can achieve congestion control only if all users act in a cooperative manner. Even a limited number of uncooperative users can cause congestion collapse. We propose a mechanism called fair packet discarding to provide incentives to users to participate in network congestion control so that the network can operate in a more efficient manner     

Definition and performance analysis of a simple, ABR-likecongestion control scheme for satellite ATM networks with guaranteedloss performance

We describe an ATM system architecture for satellite communications. The proposed architecture includes on-board switching, and supports the ATM traffic categories defined in previous specifications. In this framework, a critical issue is the control of congestion phenomena. In particular, the application of feedback-based control strategies to a satellite network is critical due to the peculiarities of such an environment: very large propagation delay, expensive transfer capacity, and limited on-board processing capability. The available bit rate (ABR) is the ATM service category handled according to a reactive congestion control (RCC). The focus of this paper is the definition of an RCC that is fully compatible with the standard ABR protocols, and that takes into account the constraints of the satellite environment. We also derive an analytical model that allows us to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme and to dimension the system. The analytical model is validated with simulations     

Evaluating the impact of emerging streaming media applications onTCP/IP performance

Emerging streaming media applications in the Internet primarily use UDP transport. The difficulty with supporting this type of traffic on the Internet is that they not only generate large volumes of traffic, but they are also not as responsive to network congestion as TCP-based applications. As a result, streaming media UDP traffic can cause two major problems in the Internet: congestion collapse and unfair allocations of bandwidth among competing traffic flows. A solution to these problems is available in many Internet environments. The Internet backbone, various ISPs, and DSL access networks rely on ATM as their layer 2 transport technology, and in such environments, ATM's available bit rate service can efficiently address these problems. ABR is able to avoid congestion collapse and provide fair bandwidth allocations by distributing the unutilized bandwidth fairly among competing flows. This article presents simulation results and empirical measurements that illustrate the congestion collapse and unfairness problems, and ATM ABR's effectiveness in addressing those problems     

一种无线ATM网络的MAC协议

主要研究了无线ATM网络对MAC的需求，并介绍了适用于无线ATM的一种新的MAC方案。该协议支持不同类型信息传输，比如恒定比特率（CBR），可变比特率（VBR），可用比特率（ABR），未指定比特率（UBR）。另外此协议还提供了对宽带ATM主干网的无缝连接。同时也支持与ATM相关的QoS级别。对于该协议关注的各种情况的主要原理进行了讨论。     

Performance issues in public ABR service

The available bit rate (ABR) service attracted much attention during the negotiations leading to Traffic Management Specification Version 4.0, finalized by the ATM Forum. In thr ABR service, feedback flow control of the source rate is provided in response to the changing asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)-layer transfer characteristics. The reference behavior of the source end system, the destination end system, and the switch, as detailed in the specification, allows cooperative control among these systems. The performance of the public ABR service is discussed in connection with the evolution of ATM switches. Public networks with first-generation switches provide an ABR service with a limited peak cell rate (PCR), while those with second-generation switches can provide an ABR service with any PCR. In such networks, TCP-over-ABR works well. Point-to-multipoint ABR will be provided in advanced switches. A method is proposed for maintaining the throughput of point-to-multipoint ABR when the number of leaves is increased     

An efficient feedback consolidation algorithm forpoint-to-multipoint ABR service in ATM network

In this letter, we propose an efficient feedback consolidation algorithm for a point-to-multipoint available bit rate (ABR) service in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. The proposed scheme can achieve fast transient response to the congestion status on a branch as well as effectively eliminate the consolidation noise     

Enhanced distributed explicit rate allocation for ABR services inATM networks

Rate allocation for available bit-rate (ABR) services in ATM networks has received a considerable amount of attention, but important issues such as bandwidth fairness, MCR rate guarantees, and queue control still require further investigation. In light of these concerns, an enhanced rate allocation algorithm is proposed for congestion management using explicit rate feedback control. The algorithm uses fast, exact rate computations and is capable of achieving a variety of MCR-related fairness criteria. The scheme handles transient effects and can function in heterogeneous networks carrying higher priority real-time traffic. Simulation results for a wide range of network scenarios demonstrate that the algorithm effectively controls queue buildups and achieves good fairness. Performance scalability to large networks under challenging conditions is also shown for a given control parameter set     

Analysis of source policy and its effects on TCP in rate-controlledATM networks

This paper provides an analysis of the source policy in the rate-based congestion control scheme developed by the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Forum for available bit rate service and derives approximate analytical closed-form expressions to describe the rate increase process. These approximations are used to analyze the impact of the source algorithm on the TCP slow-start process operating over a rate-controlled ATM network. The results show that the increase in TCP congestion window ramp-up time is noticeable when the round-trip delay is small. The results are verified by simulation     

ATM宽带网络流量与拥塞控制研究

文章阐明对 ATM 网络进行流量与拥塞控制不仅是由 ATM网络的分组交换本质所决定,也是实现 B-ISDN 的基本要求。文章还对目前 ATM 网络的 ABR流量与拥塞控制机制进行了评述,提出了 ABR 流量控制尚待解决的一些问题。