Efficient flow control for multimedia and TCP/IP traffics

The purpose of this paper is to propose a modified explicit rate indication for congestion avoidance (MERICA) scheme for ATM networks. This modified scheme belongs to the class of closed-loop rate-based congestion control scheme. Three aspects are modified for making the scheme to adapt to various traffic types of ATM networks. First, the VBR and CBR traffics are considered. Second, a new congestion eliminating scheme is shown. Third, a new BECN mechanism for available bit rate (ABR) sources is presented. In the simulation model, two environments, LAN and WAN, are simulated to illustrate the performance factors, including the link utilization, the average waiting time, the fairness, and the loss rate. The simulation results show that the link utilization of MERICA performs well; meanwhile, its average delay and fairness are also better than other explicit rate congestion control mechanisms. Furthermore, the most attractive advantage is that MERICA has no loss in LAN and WAN environments