A new approach to performance-oriented flow control

Abstract

Flow control is proposed as a means of obtaining an "optimal tradeoff" between low delay and high throughput in computer networks. Several versions of "optimal tradeoff" are defined based on network power. A class of algorithms which attempt to optimize network performance are investigated. These algorithms operate on the design principles of dynamic, distributed execution and use of local information. These design principles force the algorithms to be suboptimal, and we thus investigate the relative performance of each in different network configurations. Several properties of power as a network performance objective function are examined. In certain configurations, two variations of network power are unfair to certain users by not permitting them to send any messages. A version of network power ("product of powers") corrects this deficiency. Other properties discussed include the nonconvexity of the generalized power function.