A multi-criteria approach to fair and efficient bandwidth allocation

In systems which serve many users there is a need to respect some fairness rules while looking for the overall efficiency. This applies among others to network design where a central issue is how to allocate bandwidth to flows efficiently and fairly. The so-called max-min fairness is widely used to meet these goals. However, allocating the bandwidth to optimize the worst performance may cause a large worsening of the overall throughput of the network. In this paper we show how the concepts of mult-criteria equitable optimization can effectively be used to generate various fair and efficient allocation schemes. We introduce a multi-criteria model equivalent to equitable optimization and we develop a corresponding reference point procedure to generate fair and efficient bandwidth allocations. Our analysis is focused on the nominal network design for elastic traffic that is currently the most significant traffic of IP networks. The procedure is tested on a sample network dimensioning problem for elastic traffic and its abilities to model various preferences are demonstrated. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.