Fluid Limits for Bandwidth-Sharing Networks with Rate Constraints

Bandwidth-sharing networks as introduced by Massoulié & Roberts (1998) model the dynamic interaction among an evolving population of elastic flows competing for several links. With policies based on optimization procedures, such models are of interest both from a Queueing Theory and Operations Research perspective. In the present paper, we focus on bandwidth-sharing networks with capacities and arrival rates of a large order of magnitude compared to transfer rates of individual flows. This regime is standard in practice. In particular, we extend previous work by Reed & Zwart (2010) on fluid approximations for such networks: we allow interarrival times, flow sizes and patience times to be generally distributed, rather than exponentially distributed. We also develop polynomial-time computable fixed-point approximations for stationary distributions of bandwidth-sharing networks, and suggest new techniques for deriving these types of results.