Flow Control and Routing Algorithms for Data Networks

Book excerpt: We consider flow control algorithms consisting of two parts: quasi-static flow control and dynamic flow control. The quasi-static part uses short term average information on network utilization to allocate maximum data rates and to determine routes for each user. The rates are allocated to achieve an optimal trade-off between assigned priority cost functions for each user and the cost of congestion in the network. This optimization can be done by a distributed algorithm and is essentially no more complicated than optimizing routing alone. The dynamic flow control has the function of admitting or rejecting individual units of traffic into the network so as to enforce the maximum allocated rates and to prevent congestion by smoothing out the fluctuations in buffer occupancy. (Author).