Inter-receiver fairness

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Abstract
In a multicast ABR service, a connection is typically restricted to the rate allowed on the bottleneck link in the distribution tree from the source to the set of receivers. Because of this, receivers in the connection can experience inter-receiver unfairness , when the preferred operating rates of the receivers are different. In this paper we explore the issue of improving the inter-receiver fairness in a multicast ABR connection by allowing the connection to operate at a rate higher than what is allowed by the multicast tree's bottleneck link. Since this can result in cell loss to some receivers, we operate with the knowledge of each receiver's application-specific loss tolerance. The multicast connection rate is not allowed to increase beyond the point where the cell loss on a path to a receiver exceeds this receiver's loss tolerance. Based on these ideas we develop an inter-receiver fairness measure and a technique for determining the rate that maximizes this measure. We show possible switch algorithms that can be used to convey the parameters needed to compute the function to the connection's source. In addition we develop a global network measure that helps us assess the effect of increasing inter-receiver fairness on the total network delivered throughput. We also briefly explore improving inter-receiver fairness through the use of multiple virtual circuits to carry traffic for a single multicast session. A set of examples demonstrate the use of the inter-receiver fairness concept in various network scenarios.

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