Max-min rate control algorithm for available bit rate service in ATM networks

The definition of available bit rate (ABR) service has been a focus of activities of the ATM Forum. The Forum has adopted rate-based schemes as the standard for congestion control of ABR services. The enhanced proportional rate control algorithm (EPRCA) has been suggested as a possible algorithm for the switch behavior. In this paper, we propose a new family of algorithms for the switch behavior, called max-min rate control algorithms (MMRCA). The basic MMRCA scheme uses minimum and maximum rate of all active connections to select which connections should be forced to decrease their rate during congestion; the enhancements of the basic scheme use additional congestion detection mechanisms to prevent potential congestion by intelligently regulating selected connections. The new schemes are fully compatible with the existing ATM standard, and have low hardware complexity. All MMRCA schemes converge to the same fair share for all connections as EPRCA, but achieve faster convergence time; the enhanced MMRCA schemes also require smaller buffer sizes at the switches, and achieve higher link utilization than EPRCA. LANs and WANs are discussed.