Stability and fairness of rate estimation-based AIAD congestion control in TCP

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-1-2005

Abstract

We analyze two achievable rate estimators that use different timestamps of consecutive packets. We examine the effect of the choice of rate estimators on the stability and fairness of a class of TCP protocols that use this estimated rate to implement the additive-increase/ adaptive-decrease (AIAD) congestion control. Simulation results confirm our analysis that rate estimation based on the inter-arrival times of the ACK packets is not properly bounded and would cause instability of the AIAD algorithm and unfairness among competing TCP flows, particularly in networks with small or moderate buffer space. Whereas, the rate estimation based on the inter-arrival times of the data packet at the receiver maintains its accuracy even when the reverse path is congested, and enables the AIAD algorithm to maintain the stability and fairness as the number of competing flows increases. Our analysis also suggests a straightforward enhancement to TCP Westwood that would improve its stability and fairness. The enhanced algorithm can be easily implemented without any modifications to the TCP receiver-side code by enabling the TCP timestamps option. © 2005 IEEE.

Identifier

17744392006 (Scopus)

Publication Title

IEEE Communications Letters

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1109/LCOMM.2005.04027

ISSN

10897798

First Page

378

Last Page

380

Issue

4

Volume

9

Fund Ref

State of New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology

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