Weighted max-min fair rate allocation for available bit rate service

An important concept in the ABR service model is the minimum cell rate (MCR) guarantee as well as the peak cell rate (PCR) constraint for each connection. Because of the MCR and PCR constraints, the classical max-min policy no longer suffices to determine rate allocation since it does not support either the MCR or the PCR. To support the MCR/PCR constraints for each connection, we present the Weighted Max-Min (WMM) policy, with the 'weight' of each connection being its MCR requirement (we assume a nonzero MCR for each ABR connection). Furthermore, an explicit-rate (ER) based ABR switch algorithm is developed to achieve the WMM policy in the distributed network environment. Our ABR algorithm is proven to converge to the WMM policy through distributed and asynchronous iterations. The performance of our ABR algorithm is demonstrated by simulation results based on the benchmark network configurations suggested by the ATM Forum.