Design and evaluation of multicast GFR for supporting TCP/IP over hybrid wired/wireless ATM

The major challenges of designing multicast traffic control protocols for a combined wired/wireless network are the varying transmission characteristi cs (bandwidth, error, and propagation delay) of the wireless and wired medi a, and the different, possibly conflicting frame rate requests from multipl e sources. To address these issues, in this paper we design and evaluate ne w unicast and multicast guaranteed frame rate (GFR) schemes for supporting TCP/IP traffic over a combined wired/wireless ATM network. We first propose a new, flexible weighted buffer management, and a frame-based virtual spac ing (VS) mechanism implementing weighted fair queueing. The unicast GFR sch eme is based on the integration of the new weighted buffer management, and either cell-based or frame-based VS. It is then extended to support multica st GFR flows. The multicast scheme presented in this paper is the first mul ticast GFR scheme appeared in the literature. These schemes are carefully e valuated over several network configuration, supporting heterogeneous TCP/I P traffic with various frame rates. Simulation results show that the new sc hemes guarantee the minimum rates requested, provide excellent fairness, an d achieve reasonably high efficiency. The new schemes may be extended to pr ovide differentiated service in both IP and mobile IP frame work.