Controlling unresponsive connections in an active network architecture

This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of Limiting Greedy Connections (LGC), an active mechanism for controlling unresponsive connections and minimizing the degradation in network performance caused by bandwidth-greedy applications. The primary objectives of the LGC mechanism are to limit the impact of greedy connections on a congested node, to keep a loose upper bound on the packet queue occupancy at the intermediate nodes of the network and to minimize packet loss. The LGC mechanism is evaluated for a variety of network topologies, transmitting sources and node queue parameters, using a Java-based active network testbed.