Link-level, congestion avoiding flow control solution for IP networks

In this paper a complete flow control solution for IP networks is presented. The mechanism consists of feedback loop and quantity-based control algorithm that utilises the Smith predictor and dead-beat control. In contrast to several proposals where flow-level control using bottleneck node approach is performed, in our solution the feedback loop is established between two neighbour nodes, what is called link-level control. The results of experiments performed in real IP network show that it is possible to completely avoid node congestion and increase throughput utilisation in the network area where the proposed solution is applied.