Flow aggregation and scalability with ROBIN: end-to-end regulation of bandwidth in intra-networks

Previous articles by Frank and Martini (see 22nd Annual Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN ´97, Minneapolis, 1997 and 23rd Annual Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN´98, Boston, 1998) on the concept of ROBIN (Regulation Of Bandwidth in Intra-Networks) gave a motivation for and presented first results of our approach to regulate the sending bandwidth of data flows in heterogeneous campus networks by determining bottlenecks and possible rate limitations with a global knowledge of the network state based on the end-to-end operation of the mechanism. This paper presents the latest results of our performance study of the ROBIN approach with a focus on the scalability and the concept of data flow aggregation within the bandwidth regulation. The QoS properties of ROBIN together with the flow aggregation for the local domain show a close relation to the ideas of the differentiated services activities for QoS support in the Internet, which is also discussed in this paper