Performance bounds for flow control protocols

We discuss a simple conceptual framework for analyzing the flow of data in integrated services networks. The framework allows us to easily model and analyze the behavior of open loop, rate based flow control protocols, as well as closed loop, window based flow control protocols. Central to the framework is the concept of a service curve element, whose departure process is bounded between the convolution of the arrival process with a minimum service curve and the convolution of the arrival process with a maximum service curve. Service curve elements can model links, propagation delays, schedulers, regulators, and window based throttles. The mathematical properties of convolution allow us to easily analyze complex configurations of service curve elements to obtain bounds on the end-to-end performance. We demonstrate this by examples, and investigate tradeoffs between buffering requirements, throughput, and delay, for different flow control strategies.