A distributed utility max–min flow control algorithm

Abstract

A fair allocation of utility (application-layer performance) is essential in providing QoS (Quality of Service) guarantee. However, there have been few researches in the literature of utility-fair network resource allocation scheme. In this paper, we propose a distributed utility max–min flow control algorithm which accommodates application diversity in that it does not require the concavity of utility functions, and is scalable in that it does not require any per-flow operation in the network. The algorithm is proved to be convergent under the assumption that there exists a single bottleneck link and the communication delay between any two links in the network is bounded. Although the convergence of the algorithm is analyzed only for the case of a single bottleneck link, we show through simulations that the proposed algorithm works as designed for the case of multiple bottleneck links as well.