HG-RCP: A rate-based flow control mechanism for intranets interconnected by ATM networks

A number of distributed corporate intranets can be connected together using the ABR service of an ATM network to form a virtual private network. Howev er, because the available bandwidth of the ABR connection may be occasional ly reduced by the ATM network, severe congestion may occur at the gateway c onnecting an intranet to the ATM network. Such congestion is likely to caus e packet loss at the gateway which in turn may significantly reduce the thr oughput of intranet applications. In order to address the above problem, we propose a novel rate-based flow control mechanism, called Host Gateway Rat e Control Protocol (HG-RCP), between the gateway and the intranet hosts. Th e control mechanism of HG-RCP is modeled as a classical feedback control sy stem and the control parameters are selected to guarantee the stability of the system. The performance of HG-RCP is evaluated using simulation for bot h limited and unlimited buffers at the gateway. Simulation results confirm that HG-RCP is very stable and fair in allocating the ABR bandwidth among t he competing sources in the intranet. It is also demonstrated via simulatio n that HG-RCP can significantly reduce the amount of buffers required at th e gateway and improve the performance of TCP/IP applications in the intrane ts. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.