Configuring Conservative Mode Fairness Algorithm in Resilient Packet Rings

The IEEE 802.17 resilient packet ring standard is a medium access control (MAC) protocol for metro-area ring networks. RPR supports spatial reuse which allows multiple nodes to send traffic at the same time. RPR employs a distributed fairness algorithm to maintain fairness among all nodes in accessing the ring. The performance of the RPR fairness algorithm depends on a number of configurable parameters. In this paper, we provide some recommendations for practitioners on how to configure the fairness algorithm in RPR to achieve a high performance while meeting fairness constraints throughout the ring. The performance metric is the achieved throughput which is translated into revenue for a service provider. We develop criteria which are used to set the parameters. We also study the effect of different parameters on the performance of the fairness algorithm through simulation results.