An ECN Probe-Based Connection Acceptance Control

Connection acceptance control is a mechanism which can be used to moderate the load placed on a network by turning away connection requests during times of overload. Traditionally these mechanisms have been implemented by setting up state within a network using signaling protocols, such as the IETF's Resource Reservation Protocol. There have been recent proposals for admission control based on end-systems probing the network to infer network load. These distributed algorithms often have less router state and hence scale more easily. This paper discusses an ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) probe-based admission control protocol that is fast, scalable and robust. The protocol's performance is then studied through simulation.