Source rate encoding mechanisms for binary congestion control

This paper focus on congestion control for best-effort packet-switching networks, where congested routers use 1 bit per packet to communicate with sources. Sources adapt their rates according to the sequence of bits received. Routers do not keep per-flow information but perform selective marking based on the source rate value inserted in each packet. We propose a new strategy for source rate encoding in forward packets, directly applicable to existing network protocols (e.g. IP). The scheme supports differentiated classes with respect to rate allocation. We test, by simulation, this encoding mechanism as well as the performance of the router and source algorithms.