In a multipoint-to-point connection, multiple senders send data to the same destination. The multipoint-to-point connection can be implemented as a shared tree, where traffic from multiple branches is merged into the same stream after every merging point. If the same VPI/VCI values are used by all senders in the multipoint-to-point VC, it is impossible for the network to determine any sender-specific characteristics (such as the sender rate and whether it is bottlenecked at this link). Thus ABR multipoint traffic management becomes complex, since per-VC (or per-flow) accounting is no longer equivalent to per-source accounting. We design and simulate a switch scheme that achieves fairness among the senders in both point-to- point and multipoint-to-point connections.

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