ABR services for overcoming misbehaving sources in a heterogeneous environment

Our analysis and simulations show that in a practical ATM network environment consisting of a mix of low cost ABR binary switches and higher cost ABR ERICA (explicit rate) switches, partially compliant ABR sources can illegally grab more bandwidth from the network without being detected. Consequently, fully compliant ABR sources lose their available fair share. At the same time, congestion conditions are experienced at the binary switches. Three schemes are contributed, namely SDP (partial-behaving user detection and punishment), DFC (Direct Fairness Control) and IFC (Instantaneous Fairness Control), all of which can be implemented in any ERICA switches with negligible increase in complexity, to overcome ABR source misbehaviour. Of the three, the IFC scheme is the most promising in terms of restoring fair share and reducing congestion in the binary switches.