A predictive control approach based on the virtual collision concept for best effort traffic control of IP networks

In this paper, a congestion control algorithm for best-effort traffic in IP networks is proposed. The aim is to avoid congestion and loss of packets, and also to share the bandwidth of a congested link among the flows that are using it. Each client provides the flow rate value that would like to obtain, and a time value (round-trip delay) that is used by routers to compute the number of active flows. One assumes that routers are allowed to use a field in the packets to propagate the reference of the flow rate, in principle, it can be done using the field option of the IP header. The clients use the information that is provided by the network and the information that is obtained by probing the Internet to adjust the servers´ flow rates. In the paper on follows the principle that clients do not need to increase their flow rates to obtain information about the congestion state of the network.