Congestion control mechanisms and the best effort service model

In the last few years there has been considerable research toward extending the Internet architecture to provide quality of service guarantees for the emerging real-time multimedia applications. QoS provision is a rather controversial endeavour. At one end of the spectrum there were proposals for reservations and per-flow state in the routers. These models did not flourish due to the network's heterogeneity the complexity of the mechanisms involved, and scalability problems. At the other end, proposals advocating that an overprovisioned best effort network will solve all the problems are not quite convincing either. The authors believe that more control is clearly needed for protecting best effort service. An important requirement is to prevent congestion collapse, keep congestion levels low, and guarantee fairness. Appropriate control structures in a best effort service network could even be used for introducing differentiation. This could be achieved without sacrificing the best effort nature of the Internet or stressing its architecture beyond its limits and original design principles. We revisit the best effort service model and the problem of congestion while focusing on the importance of cooperative resource sharing to the Internet's success, and review the congestion control principles and mechanisms which facilitate Internet resource sharing     

Congestion control for multimedia services

The problem of congestion control in high-speed networks for multimedia traffic, such as voice and video, is considered. It is shown that the performance requirements of high-speed networks involve delay, delay-jitter, and packet loss. A framing congestion control strategy based on a packet admission policy at the edges of the network and on a service discipline called stop-and-go queuing at the switching nodes is described. This strategy provides bounded end-to-end delay and a small and controllable delay-jitter. The strategy is applicable to packet switching networks in general, including fixed cell length asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), as well as networks with variable-size packets     

Congestion control methods for BISDN

Several congestion control methods for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM,) networks that support multimedia traffic by providing different guaranteed quality for each class of traffic are discussed. The two categories of congestion control methods presented are preventive congestive control and reactive congestive control. Preventive congestion control takes any action necessary to prevent congestion Reactive congestion control is responsible for any necessary action to recover from a congested situation, A summary of a proposed multilevel control scheme is also presented     

Call admission control for capacity-varying networks

Many networks, such as Non-Geostationary Orbit Satellite (NGOS) networks and networks providing multi-priority service using advance reservations, have capacities which vary over time for some or all types of calls carried on these networks. For connection-oriented networks, Call Admission Control (CAC) policies which only use current capacity information may lead to excessive and intolerable dropping of admitted calls whenever the network capacity decreases. Thus, novel CAC policies are required for these networks. Three such CAC policies are discussed, two for calls with exponentially distributed call holding times and one for calls whose holding time distributions have Increasing Failure Rate (IFR) functions. The Admission Limit Curve (ALC) is discussed and shown to be a constraint limiting the conditions under which any causal CAC policy may admit calls and still meet call dropping guarantees on an individual call basis. We demonstrate how these CAC policies and ALC represent progressive steps in developing optimal CAC policies for calls with exponentially distributed call holding times, and extend this process to the more general case of calls with IFR call holding times.     

Implicit admission control

Internet protocols currently use packet-level mechanisms to detect and react to congestion. Although these controls are essential to ensure fair sharing of the available resource between multiple flows, in some cases they are insufficient to ensure overall network stability. We believe that it is also necessary to take account of higher level concepts, such as connections, flows, and sessions when controlling network congestion. This becomes of increasing importance as more real-time traffic is carried on the Internet, since this traffic is less elastic in nature than traditional Web traffic. We argue that, in order to achieve better utility of the network as a whole, higher level congestion controls are required. By way of example, we present a simple connection admission control (CAC) scheme which can significantly improve the overall performance. This paper discusses our motivation for the use of admission control in the Internet, focusing specifically on control for TCP flows. The technique is not TCP specific, and can be applied to any type of flow in a modern IP infrastructure. Simulation results are used to show that it can drastically improve the performance of TCP over bottleneck links. We go on to describe an implementation of our algorithm for a router running the Linux 2.2.9 operating system. We show that by giving routers at bottlenecks the ability to intelligently deny admission to TCP connections, the goodput of existing connections can be significantly increased. Furthermore, the fairness of the resource allocation achieved by TCP is improved     

Distributed admission control

This paper describes a framework for admission control for a packet-based network where the decisions are taken by edge devices or end-systems, rather than resources within the network. The decisions are based on the results of probe packets that the end-systems send through the network, and require only that resources apply a mark to packets in a way that is load dependent. One application example is the Internet, where marking information is fed back via an ECN bit, and we show how this approach allows a rich QoS framework for flows or streams. Our approach allows networks to be explicitly analyzed, and consequently engineered     

用于不可靠单播流的拥塞控制算法

为在兼顾公平性的同时改善高速网络环境中的性能,提出了一种基于速率的不可靠单播流拥塞控制算法RAUU(rate adaptation for unreliable unicast traffic).该算法以保存一定数量的冗余分组为控制目标,根据实际与期望冗余分组数量的差值按比例调节发送速率,控制中综合考虑了时延和丢包,并为避免速率控制的固有缺点作了针对性的设计.理论分析表明,在理想网络条件下RAUU存在并将收敛于惟一的平衡点;仿真实验显示一方面RAUU的性能与FAST相似,其吞吐率平滑性接近TFRC(TCP-friendly rate control),另一方面RAUU算法对TCP流量相对公平.     

TCP协议中的拥塞控制

网络的拥塞会导致吞吐量的下降 ,降低网络的效率 ,对网络的正常运转有很大的影响 ,最终可能导致网络的崩溃。分析了在Internet上TCP IP协议拥塞控制的原理 ,提出了在TCP层抑制拥塞的策略、方法 ,并提出了今后的研究方向     

Bandwidth sharing and admission control for elastic traffic

We consider the performance of a network like the Internet handling so‐called elastic traffic where the rate of flows adjusts to fill available bandwidth. Realized throughput depends both on the way bandwidth is shared and on the random nature of traffic. We assume traffic consists of point to point transfers of individual documents of finite size arriving according to a Poisson process. Notable results are that weighted sharing has limited impact on perceived quality of service and that discrimination in favour of short documents leads to considerably better performance than fair sharing. In a linear network, max–min fairness is preferable to proportional fairness under random traffic while the converse is true under the assumption of a static configuration of persistent flows. Admission control is advocated as a necessary means to maintain goodput in case of traffic overload. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Iterative power control based admission control for wireless networks

This paper studies transmission power control algorithms for cellular networks. One of the challenges in commonly used iterative mechanisms to achieve this is to identify if the iteration will converge since convergence indicates feasibility of transmit power allocation under prevailing network conditions. The convergence criterion should also be simple to calculate given the time constraints in a real-time wireless network. Towards this goal, this paper derives simple sufficient conditions for convergence of an iterative power control algorithm using existing bounds from matrix theory. With the help of suitable numerical examples, it is shown that the allocated transmit powers of the nodes converge when sufficient conditions are satisfied, and diverge when they are not satisfied. This forms the basis for an efficient link data-rate based admission control mechanism for wireless networks. The mechanism considers parameters such as signal strength requirement, link datarate requirement, and number of nodes in the system. Simulation based analysis shows that existing links are able to maintain their desired datarates despite the addition of new wireless links.     

Toward scalable admission control for VoIP networks

We present an overview of scalable admission control in IP networks. We introduce various approaches and discuss the mechanism and characteristics of each method. In particular, we argue that end-to-end measurement based admission control (EMBAC), which employs end-to-end on-demand probing, should be used for call admission control. Second, we consider use of EMBAC in VoIP networks. We present a new probability-based EMBAC scheme and show that its performance is close to the ideal method using virtual-trunk-based admission control. We also present a QoS allocation approach for selecting an admission threshold and dimensioning link capacities. A simple network design and evaluation results suggest that this QoS allocation approach is effective to adequately dimension a network, while satisfying end-to-end targets in terms of blocking probability and packet loss rate.     

Utility-based admission control for mobile WiMAX networks

This paper presents a novel utility-based connection admission control (CAC) scheme for IEEE 802.16e broadband wireless access networks. We develop specific utility functions for real-time and non-real-time services coupled with a handover process. Given these utility functions we characterize the network utility with respect to the allocated bandwidth, and further propose a CAC algorithm which admits a connection that conducts to the greatest utility so as to maximize the total resource utilization. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CAC algorithm in terms of network utility.     

Contention-aware admission control for ad hoc networks

An admission control algorithm must coordinate between flows to provide guarantees about how the medium is shared. In wired networks, nodes can monitor the medium to see how much bandwidth is being used. However, in ad hoc networks, communication from one node may consume the bandwidth of neighboring nodes. Therefore, the bandwidth consumption of flows and the available resources to a node are not local concepts, but related to the neighboring nodes in carrier-sensing range. Current solutions do not address how to perform admission control in such an environment so that the admitted flows in the network do not exceed network capacity. In this paper, we present a scalable and efficient admission control framework - contention-aware admission control protocol (CACP) - to support QoS in ad hoc networks. We present several options for the design of CACP and compare the performance of these options using both mathematical analysis and simulation results. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of CACP compared to existing approaches through extensive simulations.     

WCDMA系统中的呼叫允许控制分析

无线资源管理中的呼叫允许控制是WCDMA的重要组成部分，性能优良的呼叫允许控制策略可以尽可能高地提高网络资源利用率。描述了基于功率、基于干扰和基于LA的呼叫允许控制方案，比较分析了它们的性能。     

A framework for robust measurement-based admission control

Measurement-based admission control (MBAC) is an attractive mechanism to concurrently offer quality of service (QoS) to users, without requiring a priori traffic specification and on-line policing. However, several aspects of such a system need to be dearly understood in order to devise robust MBAC schemes, i.e., schemes that can match a given QoS target despite the inherent measurement uncertainty, and without the tuning of external system parameters. We study the impact of measurement uncertainty, flow arrival, departure dynamics, and of estimation memory on the performance of a generic MBAC system in a common analytical framework. We show that a certainty equivalence assumption, i.e., assuming that the measured parameters are the real ones, can grossly compromise the target performance of the system. We quantify the improvement in performance as a function of the length of the estimation window and an adjustment of the target QoS. We demonstrate the existence of a critical time scale over which the impact of admission decisions persists. Our results yield new insights into the performance of MBAC schemes, and represent quantitative and qualitative guidelines for the design of robust schemes     

Distributed admission control for power-controlled cellularwireless systems

It is well known that power control can help to improve spectrum utilization in cellular wireless systems. However, many existing distributed power control algorithms do not work well without an effective connection admission control (CAC) mechanism, because they could diverge and result in dropping existing calls when an infeasible call is admitted. In this work, based on a system parameter defined as the discriminant, we propose two distributed CAC algorithms for a power-controlled system. Under these CAC schemes, an infeasible call is rejected early, and incurs only a small disturbance to existing calls, while a feasible call is admitted and the system converges to the Pareto optimal power assignment. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of our algorithms     

VANET 中一种安全消息拥塞控制机制

针对车辆无线自组织网络在车流量密度大的情况下,周期性安全消息产生的Beacons可能占据整个信道带宽,从而导致信道拥塞的问题,提出了一种基于调整Beacon频率和车辆通信半径的拥塞控制机制。该机制首先为周期性安全消息和突发事件安全消息提出了一个信道分配算法,将周期性安全消息在信道中占用的带宽资源限定在一定的门限以下,保证有足够的信道资源传输突发事件安全消息。然后,在保证车辆用户安全的条件下,根据精确性要求和成功接收率,动态地调整Beacon频率和车辆通信半径,来控制信道中能够容纳的用户数,避免信道拥塞。     

Congestion control for sudden bandwidth changes in TCP

In this paper, we propose a novel technique to deal with sudden bandwidth changes in transmission control protocol (TCP). In the current Internet, sudden bandwidth changes may occur because of vertical handovers between heterogeneous access networks, routing path changes, cognitive ratio, and multi‐rate wireless local area network. The current implementation of TCP is designed and optimized for stable networks and does not adapt well upon sudden bandwidth changes. Consequently, it might suffer from packet losses in burst upon sudden bandwidth decrement and under‐utilization upon sudden bandwidth increment. To resolve this problem, we propose to modify the current TCP algorithm to include a new phase, called fast adaptation (FA). The FA phase is triggered upon detecting sudden bandwidth changes, and a TCP sender in the FA phase attempts to recover lost packets quickly to avoid spurious timeouts upon sudden bandwidth decrement. Upon sudden bandwidth increment, it increases its window size drastically to realize full utilization. Through extensive simulations, experiments, and analysis, it is shown that the proposed scheme can effectively deal with sudden bandwidth changes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

'Optimal energy allocation and admission control for communications satellites

We address the issue of optimal energy allocation and admission control for communications satellites in Earth orbit. Such satellites receive requests for transmission as they orbit the Earth, but may not be able to serve them all, due to energy limitations. The objective is to choose which requests to serve so that the expected total reward is maximized. The special case of a single energy-constrained satellite is considered. Rewards and demands from users for transmission (energy) are random and known only at request time. Using a dynamic programming approach, an optimal policy is derived and is characterized in terms of thresholds. Furthermore, in the special case where demand for energy is unlimited, an optimal policy is obtained in closed form. Although motivated by satellite communications, our approach is general and can be used to solve a variety of resource allocation problems in wireless communications.     

Proportional differentiated admission control

This letter presents a new admission control policy inspired in the framework of proportional differentiated services (PDS). While most of previous PDS has focused on average queueing delays and packet drops to differentiate the performance of adaptive applications, the proportional differentiation admission control (PDAC) differentiates inelastic traffic in terms of blocking probabilities. The PDAC is built up using asymptotic approximation theory, employs a class based approach, and conforms with the PDS requirements of predictability and controllability . Numerical experiments confirm a good performance of the approach.