We develop a simulation model for the ATM ABR service, and use it to engineer ABR congestion control behavior. Although significant work has been performed on ABR rate allocation algorithms at network switches, little work has focused on the end system behavior, which we examine in this paper. The effect of the speed of links on the path from the source to the destination, and the connection round trip time on the selec- tion of ABR parameter values is studied. Simulation results illustrate the impact of the key parameters that control rate reduction in the absence of network feedback on performance, in terms of connection throughputs, queue lengths at the switches and link utilizations. These results have been incorporated into the ABR standards, and can be generalized to cooper- ative congestion control with explicit congestion notification (ECN) in the Internet.

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