A novel flow control mechanism for ABR traffic in ATM networks

In this paper we develop a novel mechanism for feedback based flow control in ATM networks. The underlying flow control mechanism is a class of back-pressure algorithms that ensure no data loss and operate based on simple 'stop' and 'start' signals. We present a methodology which allows us to specify design control parameters for a given set of performance objectives. It allows the real-time traffic (CBR, VBR) and the ABR traffic to effectively share the bandwidth and buffer space at each node. It is scalable with distance, link speed, and number of connections, hence it is suitable for both LAN and WAN environments. Also, it can operate with a small buffer size requirement, low management complexity, and low signalling overhead. Further, it is highly responsive to changes in available bandwidth, leading to virtually 100% utilization when ABR sources always have data to transfer. The numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves high utilization with low overall complexity and small buffer size requirements.