Ants routing: An adaptive packet flow control scheme in multimedia communication

This paper reports on the advantages of introducing a novel adaptive congestion control algorithm on physical networks for multimedia communication at virtual channels and virtual paths' levels. The adaptive control begins when congestion appears on the network. The control strategy is based on the information of congestion that is monitored and revised according to congestion status at any time. Basically the network is composed of physical communication links and control lines between nodes in the network topology. Nodes are composed of a switching system for multimedia users, a protocol converter, a knowledge-based flow control system for the multimedia network, a router, and a network interface. From/to the network node, actual information is exchanged and knowledge-based information for flow control is also exchanged. As a result, one can obtain the prospective trends in intelligent flow control to avoid the congestion of multimedia information on the network.