Access to a network channel: a survey into the unfairness problem

Network users and designers are frequently concerned about the fairness of service achieved either in the local network or in internetworking. The authors compile the basic issues, notions, and definitions of fairness in both the internetworking and intranetworking contexts from the available literature. The optimization schemes that ensure fairness and the criteria used for such optimization, as available in the internetworking literature, are discussed. In the intranetworking environment, delay and throughput are often used as the fairness parameters. Often the approach to fairness entirely depends on the protocol implementation, and hence fairness criteria should be uniquely identified for each protocol.<>