Implementation and Verification of Autonomous Decentralized Flow Control Based on Local Interaction

Abstract

We have already proposed the framework of autonomous decentralized control based on local-interaction as a novel control mechanism for communication networks. This framework is based on the relation between local interaction and the solution yielded by a partial differential equation. In this framework, the state of the complete system is controlled by appropriately designing the autonomous operation of the subsystems. That is, the local action rules (micro-level) are designed to produce an appropriate state of the whole system at the macro-level. Our previous studies proposed diffusion type flow control (DFC) as a solution for the extremely time sensitive flow control required by high-speed networks and we have evaluated the performance of DFC by simulation. In this paper, to apply DFC to real networks, we show the technique to implement the DFC functions on PCs and to investigate its performance in the presence of TCP.