Title: Global stability of the Rate Control Protocol (RCP) and some implications for protocol design,
Abstract: The Rate Control Protocol (RCP) is a congestion control protocol that relies
on explicit feedback from routers. RCP estimates the flow rate using two forms
of feedback: rate mismatch and queue size. However, it remains an open design
question whether queue size feedback in RCP is useful, given the presence of
rate mismatch. The model we consider has RCP flows operating over a single
bottleneck, with heterogeneous time delays. We first derive a sufficient
condition for global stability, and then highlight how this condition favors
the design choice of having only rate mismatch in the protocol definition.