In this paper, we propose a new optimization approach to the rate control problem in a wired-cum-wireless network. A primal-dual interior-point(PDIP) algorithm is used to find the solution of the rate optimization problem. We show a comparison between the dual-based(DB) algorithm and PDIP algorithm for solving the rate control problem in the wired-cum-wireless network. The PDIP algorithm performs much better than the DB algorithm. The PDIP can be considered as an attractive method to solve the rate control problem in network. We also present a numerical example and simulation to illustrate our conclusions.