Fairness algorithm of the Resilient Packet Ring

Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) is a newly developed Layer 2 access technology for ring topology based high speed network. Fairness Algorithm (FA), one of its key technologies, takes responsibility for regulating each station access to the ring. Since different methods emphasize particularly on different aspects, the RPR Work Group have tabled several proposals. This paper will discuss two of them and propose an improved algorithm, which can be seen as a generalization of the two schemes proposed in [I] and [2]. The new algorithm is a distributed algorithm, and uses a multi level feedback mechanism. Each station calculates its own fair rate to regulate its access to the ring, and sends fairness control message (FCM) with its bandwidth demand information to the whole ring. All stations keep a bandwidth demand image, which update periodically based on the information of received FCM. The image can be used for local fair rate calculation to achieve fair access. In the properties study section of this paper, we compare our algorithm with the two existing one both in theoretical method and in scenario simulation. Our algorithm has successfully resolve lack of the awareness of multi congestion points in [I] and the drawback of weakness of fault tolerance in [2].