Patent ID: 6359863
Filing Date: 2002-03-19
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
A congestion control method for communications networks having a plurality of connections to switches, wherein each connection has a current transmission rate, wherein the source of each connection requests a specific amount of bandwidth to be allocated to the connection by the switches on its path to the destination, and wherein requests for bandwidth allocation are carried by resource management (RM) cells transmitted periodically by the source, comprising the steps of:(a) estimating the current transmission rate of each connection by measuring the time interval between the reception of a plurality of resource management (RM) cells from the given connection; (b) allocating bandwidth using said estimated transmission rate as the requested rate; (c) designating a connection for which a max-min fairness rate for that connection is less than the minimum cell rate (MCR) for that connection as a MCR-limited connection; and (d) allocating bandwidth to said MCR-limited connection equal to said connection's MCR to satisfy a minimum rate requirement for that connection.