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Limitations of equation-based congestion control

Published: 01 August 2007 Publication History

Abstract

We study limitations of an equation-based congestion control protocol, called TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC). It examines how the three main factors that determine TFRC throughput, namely, the TCP-friendly equation, loss event rate estimation, and delay estimation, can influence the long-term throughput imbalance between TFRC and TCP. Especially, we show that different sending rates of competing flows cause these flows to experience different loss event rates. There are several fundamental reasons why TFRC and TCP flows have different average sending rates, from the first place. Earlier work shows that the convexity of the TCP-friendly equation used in TFRC causes the sending rate difference. We report two additional reasons in this paper: 1) the convexity of 1/x where x is a loss event period and 2) different retransmission timeout period (RTO) estimations of TCP and TFRC. These factors can be the reasons for TCP and TFRC to experience initially different sending rates. But we find that the loss event rate difference due to the differing sending rates greatly amplifies the initial throughput difference; in some extreme cases, TFRC uses around 20 times more, or sometimes 10 times less, bandwidth than TCP. Despite these factors influencing the throughput difference, we also find that simple heuristics can greatly mitigate the problem.

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  • (2011)Wireless Transport Layer Congestion Control EvaluationInternational Journal of Wireless Networks and Broadband Technologies10.4018/ijwnbt.20110701051:3(71-81)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2011
  • (2010)TCP-friendly congestion control for the fair streaming of scalable videoComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2010.02.02233:14(1578-1588)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2010
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Published In

cover image IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking  Volume 15, Issue 4
August 2007
243 pages

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IEEE Press

Publication History

Published: 01 August 2007
Published in TON Volume 15, Issue 4

Author Tags

  1. congestion control
  2. equation-based rate control

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  • (2016)Media-Friendly and TCP-Friendly Rate Control Protocols for Multimedia StreamingIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology10.1109/TCSVT.2015.246907526:8(1516-1531)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2016
  • (2011)Wireless Transport Layer Congestion Control EvaluationInternational Journal of Wireless Networks and Broadband Technologies10.4018/ijwnbt.20110701051:3(71-81)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2011
  • (2010)TCP-friendly congestion control for the fair streaming of scalable videoComputer Communications10.1016/j.comcom.2010.02.02233:14(1578-1588)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2010
  • (2009)Interval type-2 fuzzy logic congestion control for video streaming across IP networksIEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems10.1109/TFUZZ.2009.202332517:5(1123-1142)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2009
  • (2009)Transport-independent fairnessComputer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking10.1016/j.comnet.2009.04.01153:14(2444-2457)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2009

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