Patent ID: 7920476

Claim:
A method for network bandwidth utilization, comprising: limiting a flow rate of a particular dataflow injected in a network from a dataflow source to a particular rate, r; receiving return datapackets, at the dataflow source from a dataflow destination, with marks that indicate network congestion; increasing the flow rate of said particular dataflow according to an increase function if the marks of the return datapackets indicate no network congestion; and decreasing the flow rate of said particular dataflow according to a decrease function if the marks of the return datapackets indicate network congestion, wherein a recovery time is a duration of time elapsed from the time the flow rate is decreased from the particular rate r due to network congestion, until the time the flow rate recovers to the particular rate r, and wherein the increase function is based at least on the particular rate r and is adapted to recover the flow rate of the particular dataflow to the particular rate r over a period of time after a decrease in the flow rate, such that the recovery time is a constant value for at least two different flow rates, regardless of differing amounts by which the at least two different flow rates are decreased due to network congestion.