Target-rate driven resource sharing in queueing systems

Abstract

We consider the problem of multiple packet streams being fed into queues with finite buffers and competing for processing bandwidth. Due to finite buffer size, the packets may be dropped (when buffers become full); therefore the effective throughput of each stream that flows through a server is impacted by the rates at which other streams come into the server. In this paper, we study the case where each source needs to maintain a target throughput in order to provide satisfactory user experience at the destination. We give a simple and efficient distributed update scheme for source rate control: the source adjusts its rate of sending packets based on the observed throughput rate at the destination in each round. We provide the conditions under which the scheme converges to the target throughput in both the single-queue case and the network case.