Optimization-based congestion control for multicast communications

This article outlines an approach for multicast congestion control based on an economic model that has been successfully applied to unicast congestion control. In this model, congestion signals are interpreted as prices and congestion-controlled sessions as utility maximizing agents. A naive extension of the unicast model fails to achieve a reasonable balance between providing the incentives necessary to promote the use of multicast and ensuring that multicast sessions do not interact too aggressively with unicast sessions. We extend the model by introducing a rational definition of multicast utility. The revised model provides a basis for multicast congestion control protocols that provide incentives to use multicast but are necessarily unfair to unicast traffic. We show, however, that the degree of unfairness can be controlled by appropriately setting a design parameter with a limiting case of strict fairness.