Patent ID: 6069872
Filing Date: 2000-05-30
Classification: H04L,H04Q

Abstract:
A method for controlling congestion in a network switch by controlling the transmission rate of a source connected by a virtual channel to a transmission resource within the switch, the source transmitting data at a current cell rate, the method comprising:estimating a total number of connections connected to the transmission resource within the switch that are transmitting data through the transmission resource within the switch to generate an estimated number of active connections;determining a fair bandwidth allocation in accordance with a predetermined fairness criteria over a predetermined interval based on the current cell rate and the minimum cell rate of all sources connected through the transmission resource within the switch and the spare bandwidth of the transmission resource for each source connected through the transmission resource;calculating an adjusted transmission rate for a particular source connected to the transmission resource within the switch based on said current cell rate of the source, said fair bandwidth allocation, said estimated number of active connections and a queue length; andtransmitting said adjusted transmission rate backwards to the particular source in order to explicitly control the transmission rate of the source and control the congestion of the network switch.