A novel fairness mechanism based on the number of effective nodes for efficient bandwidth allocation in the resilient packet ring

Metro networks are based on SONET/SDH which uses the circuit switching technology. Circuit switching is inappropriate for the Internet traffic which is very bursty nature. Therefore, metro networks can become a bottleneck. In order to resolve this problem, the IEEE 802.17 working group has proposed the Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) technology. In order to provide fairness among stations in the RPR network, two types of RPR fairness mechanisms have been defined. However, the IEEE 802.17 RPR fairness mechanisms have the problem of inefficient use of the available bandwidth after the congestion at a node has been resolved. In this paper, we propose an improved bandwidth allocation in which, after the congestion resolution at a node, the node estimates the number of effective nodes transmitting traffic, measures the remaining bandwidth and fairly allocates the available bandwidth to effective nodes. To show the performance of our proposed mechanism, we have performed simulation and show that the proposed mechanism gives higher bandwidth utilization than the existing RPR fairness mechanisms.