An ECN—based Optimal Flow Control Algroithm for the Internet

According to the Wide Area Network model,we formulate Internet flow control as a constrained convex programming problem,where the objective is to maximize the total utility of all sources over their transmission rates,Based on this formulation,flow control can be converted to a normal unconstrained optimization problem through the barrier function method.so that it can be solved by means of a gradient projection algorithm with properly rate iterations.We prove that the algorithm converges to the global optimal point,which is also a stable proportional fair rate allocation point,provided that the step size is properly chosen.The main difficulty facing the realization of iteration algorithm is the distributed computation of congestion measure.Fortunately,Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) is likely to be used to improve the performance of TCP in the near future.By using ECN,it is possible to realize the iteration algorithm in IP networks.Our algorithm is divided into two parts,algorithms in the router and in the source.The router marks the ECN bit with a probability that varies as its buffer occupancy varies,so that the congestion measure of links can be communicated to the source when the marked ECN bits are reflected back from its destination.Source rates are then updated by all sessions according to the received congestion measure.The main advantage of our scheme is its fast convergence ability and robustness;it can also provide the network with zero packet loss by properly choosing the queue threshold and provide differentiated service to users by applying different utility functions.