Multipoint-to-point session fairness in the Internet

In the current Internet, many applications start sessions with multiple connections to multiple servers in order to expedite the reception of data. One may argue that such aggressive behavior leads to unfair sharing of bandwidth using the current per-connection rate allocation methods. Sessions with more connections get a higher total rate than competing sessions with fewer connections. In this paper, we explore the issue of fairness of rate allocation from a session point of view. We define a multipoint-to-point session as a set of point-to-point connections started from multiple servers to a client in order to transfer an application-level object. We present session fairness definitions, propose algorithms to achieve these definitions, and compare the resulting allocations with the traditional connection fair algorithm. It is clear from our evaluations that the session fair algorithms proposed achieve a more fair distribution of session rates than the connection fair algorithm, by redistributing the rates claimed by sessions with more connections. We present some initial thoughts on the challenges involved in implementing the session fair algorithms proposed.