Rate control of elastic connections competing with long-range dependent network traffic

Long-range dependence is regarded as a fundamental property of network traffic. Using an original approach, we incorporate this property in a traffic control mechanism for elastic connections that can adapt to the instantaneous network load in a differentiated services-type framework. In this scenario, the network makes predictions of bandwidth requirements of the high-priority traffic and returns feedback information to the elastic source. We include a prediction compensation algorithm that compensates for the larger prediction errors for connections with longer roundtrip delay, and analyze the performance of this algorithm. The specific topology involved in traffic control for differentiated services is thus harnessed, together with the long-range dependence, to improve network performance, thereby counteracting the undesirable characteristics of self-similarity. Furthermore, an adaptive version of the rate-based control algorithm is studied, based on the use of real-time estimates of traffic parameters, including the mean, variance, and Hurst parameter.