Effect of Time Delay in Network Traffic Control

An additive-increase-multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) type of algorithm has been popular in network congestion control. The stability and performance of the algorithm has been analyzed for the single bottleneck network model. This paper considers the impact of time delay on the performance of the AIMD algorithm applied to the rate control of a single bottleneck, multiple-source network. An estimate of the worst case queue length is derived which can be used to allocate buffers at bottlenecks to avoid loss. This bound is nonconservative in the sense that there is an initial source rate distribution that can lead to this queue length.