Effective control for ABR multipoint-to-multipoint services

Although many flow control schemes have been proposed for ABR (available bit rate) multipoint-to-multipoint (mp-mp) services in ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) networks, several issues remain to be resolved: bandwidth allocation definitions (BADs), and the effectiveness of those schemes. No consensus has been reached concerning the issue of criteria for allocating ABR bandwidth among multipoint connections, or between point-to-point and multipoint connections. On the other hand, existing mp-mp flow control schemes implement only one BAD, namely source-based allocation. This inflexibility can limit the application of those schemes. Moreover, our simulation results show that they suffer from the problems of link under-utilization and/or noncompliance with the selected BAD. We propose a mp-mp flow control algorithm, the FCAM algorithm, that supports a large set of BADs, provides correct rate allocations with fast convergence, and maximizes link utilization. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the above advantages of the FCAM algorithm