  Bandwidth-sharing networks as introduced by Massouli\'e & Roberts (1998)
model the dynamic interaction among an evolving population of elastic flows
competing for several links. With policies based on optimization procedures,
such models are of interest both from a Queueing Theory and Operations Research
perspective.
  In the present paper, we focus on bandwidth-sharing networks with capacities
and arrival rates of a large order of magnitude compared to transfer rates of
individual flows. This regime is standard in practice. In particular, we extend
previous work by Reed & Zwart (2010) on fluid approximations for such networks:
we allow interarrival times, flow sizes and patient times (i.e. abandonment
times measured from the arrival epochs) to be generally distributed, rather
than exponentially distributed. We also develop polynomial-time computable
fixed-point approximations for stationary distributions of bandwidth-sharing
networks, and suggest new techniques for deriving these types of results.
