Publication No 36632

Author(s)

Scharf, M.*; Hauger, S.*; Kögel, J.*

Title

Quick-Start TCP: From Theory to Practice

Topics

Internet; Communication Control

Methods

Performance Evaluation; Protocol Engineering; Traffic Engineering

Keywords

TCP; CONGESTION CONTROL; PERFORMANCE EVALUATION; INTERNET

Abstract

Router-assisted congestion control schemes are considered to be one potential solution to improve the transport protocol performance in high-speed wide-area networks. The experimental Quick-Start TCP extension uses explicit router feedback to avoid the standard Slow-Start mechanism. This allows a TCP connection to almost immediately utilize a highspeed path and can significantly speed up broadband interactive applications. Similar to other recently proposed new congestion control approaches, Quick-Start requires modifications both in TCP connection endpoints as well as in routers. While the theoretical performance benefit of Quick-Start is evident, its implementation and usage in practice has rarely been addressed so far. This paper gives an overview of our Quick- Start implementation efforts and real-world experiments. First, we report from our experiences with an implementation in the Linux protocol stack, which has been extended to offer full Quick- Start functionality. Another implementation of the new router functions on a network processor shows that fast path processing of Quick-Start is technically feasible at very high line speeds. Second, our measurements show how Quick-Start performs in practice, and they quantify the benefit compared to the existing TCP congestion control. Finally, we determine the performance costs of using Quick-Start. Our measurements suggest that the Quick-Start processing overhead is very moderate.

Year

2008

Reference entry

Scharf, M.; Hauger, S.; Kögel, J.
Quick-Start TCP: From Theory to Practice
Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Protocols for FAST Long-Distance Networks, Manchester, March 2008

BibTex file

Download  [BIBTEX]

Full Text

Download  [PDF]