Congestion Control Algorithms From Optimal Control Perspective

This paper is concerned with understanding the connection between the existing Internet congestion control algorithms and the optimal control theory. The available resource allocation controllers are mainly devised to derive the state of the system to a desired equilibrium point and, therefore, they are oblivious to the transient behavior of the closed-loop system. This paper aims to investigate what dynamical functions the existing algorithms maximize (minimize). In particular, it is shown that there exist meaningful cost functionals whose minimization leads to the celebrated primal and dual congestion algorithms.