How Bad is Suboptimal Rate Allocation?

Not too bad. A rate allocation that is suboptimal with respect to a utility maximization formulation still maintains the maximum flow-level stability when the utility gap is sufficiently small, and provides a minimum size of stability region otherwise. Utility-suboptimal allocation may also enhance other network performance metrics, e.g., it may increase network throughput and reduce link saturation. Quantifying these intuitions, this paper provides a theoretical support for turning attention from optimal but complex solutions of network optimization to those that are simple even though suboptimal.