CONGESTION CONTROL THROUGH INPUT RATE REGULATION

Traditional packet switching networks have typically employed window-b ased congestion control schemes in order to regulate traffic flow. In broadband networks, the high speed of the communication links and the varied nature of the carried traffic make such schemes inappropriate. Therefore, simpler and more efficient schemes have to be proposed to f ully exploit the large available bandwidth. These schemes usually oper ate through input rate regulation. Typically, they force the informati on sources to limit their average input rate below some predefined rat e while still allowing for a certain degree of burstiness. This ensure s that no source will exceed for an extensive period of time the rate provided by the network during the call-setup procedure. The ''leaky b ucket'' scheme is an example of an input rate regulation. In this pape r, input rate regulation schemes are extensively studied from the view point of smoothing and regulating effects of the incoming traffic. The smoothing effect is characterized by the variance of the interdepartu re time of the packet departure process from the input rate regulation mechanism. Under the assumption of Poisson arrivals the characteristi cs of this departute process are explicitly derived in terms of scheme 's parameters and the tradeoff between the smoothness of the departure process and packets waiting time is studied. We present results for b oth finite and infinite buffer pool sizes.