  The mean-field limit of a Markovian model describing the interaction of
several classes of permanent connections in a network is analyzed. Each of the
connections has a self-adaptive behavior in that its transmission rate along
its route depends on the level of congestion of the nodes of the route. Since
several classes of connections going through the nodes of the network are
considered, an original mean-field result in a multi-class context is
established. It is shown that, as the number of connections goes to infinity,
the behavior of the different classes of connections can be represented by the
solution of an unusual nonlinear stochastic differential equation depending not
only on the sample paths of the process, but also on its distribution.
Existence and uniqueness results for the solutions of these equations are
derived. Properties of their invariant distributions are investigated and it is
shown that, under some natural assumptions, they are determined by the
solutions of a fixed-point equation in a finite-dimensional space.
