Flow aggregation and scalability with ROBIN: end-to-end regulation of bandwidth in intra-networks

Previous articles by Frank and Martini (see 22nd Annual Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN '97, Minneapolis, 1997 and 23rd Annual Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN'98, Boston, 1998) on the concept of ROBIN (Regulation Of Bandwidth in Intra-Networks) gave a motivation for and presented first results of our approach to regulate the sending bandwidth of data flows in heterogeneous campus networks by determining bottlenecks and possible rate limitations with a global knowledge of the network state based on the end-to-end operation of the mechanism. This paper presents the latest results of our performance study of the ROBIN approach with a focus on the scalability and the concept of data flow aggregation within the bandwidth regulation. The QoS properties of ROBIN together with the flow aggregation for the local domain show a close relation to the ideas of the differentiated services activities for QoS support in the Internet, which is also discussed in this paper.