Systems and methods are provided for allocating resources of a network among a plurality of traffic demands to optimize fairness and network utilization. Methods based on flow-increase dynamics converge toward an upward max-min fair (UMMF) allocation, in which the value of each traffic demand cannot be increased, along any of its paths, even if larger traffic demands are removed from the network. An efficient iterative algorithm that converges to a UMMF solution is also provided. The described methods and systems can be implemented efficiently, distributively, and asynchronously.