Source Based

Congestion Control
Mechanisms
Chapter 5 – Unit I
Contents
Traditional TCP
TCP Modifications for Networks
◦ Scalable TCP
◦ HighSpeed TCP
◦ BIC
◦ CUBIC
Delay Based Congestion Control
◦ TCP Vegas
◦ FAST TCP
Traditional TCP
Traditional Versions:
◦ TCP Tahoe, TCP Reno, TCP NewReno
Uses Self-Clocking based congestion control
◦ Uses Congestion Window (CW)
◦ Idea: linearly increasing its rate when positive ACK scenario;
and exponentially reducing its rate when congestion is
detected
 Two phases in TCP Tahoe
◦ Slow Start and Congestion Avoidance
 TCP NewReno
◦ Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery
Ie.., During CA phase for each ack, window is
increased as:
TCP Modifications for Networks
TCP Reno outperforms and satisfies in sever congestion
states.
But, that as the bandwidth-delay product grows, TCP Reno
eventually becomes a performance bottleneck
3 reasons for the drawback:
◦ Linear increase by one packet per round trip time is too slow, and
multiplicative decrease per loss event is too drastic.
◦ Maintaining large average congestion windows requires an extremely
small loss probability in equilibrium
◦ TCP Reno uses a binary congestion signal (packet loss), which
introduces strong oscillations in the congestion window.
a) Scalable TCP (STCP)
Same Slow start phase
In Congestion Avoidance phase:
◦ CW is increases as:

◦ where a is a constant satisfying 0 < a < 1.

When congestion is detected,
◦ CW is decreased as:

◦ where 0 < b < 1 is a design constant.

◦ The use of a = 0.01 and b = 0.125
b) High Speed TCP (HSTCP)
A TCP modification that applies only when the congestion
window is large.
Upon receiving an ACK while in congestion avoidance mode
◦ During positive ACKs, CW is altered as:

◦ During loss event, CW is altered as:

◦ a(w) and b(w) are appropriate functions of w.

◦ Ideal values: a(w) =1 and b(w) = 1/2
c) BIC
BIC consists of two parts
◦ The binary search increase and
◦ The additive increase.
The binary search increase:
◦ Congestion control is treated as a searching problem
◦ The system generates binary feedback, whenever at packet
loss the current window is larger than the network capacity
◦ Maintains 2 window thresholds:
 Wmin - window size just after the fast recovery
 Wmax - window size just before the fast recovery
The binary search increase …
◦ Search is between Wmin and Wmax
◦ The algorithm repeatedly computes the midpoint between
Wmax and Wmin,
◦ Current CW = midpoint
◦ Now checks for feedback, in the form of packet losses
 If packet loss; new Wmax = midpoint
 Else; new Wmin = midpoint

Additive increase:
◦ Leads to faster convergence and RTT fairness
◦ Maintains two increment thresholds Smin and Smax.
◦ If Wmin - CW >> 0 increase CW by Smax
◦ If CW - Wmax << 0 increase CW by Smin
d) CUBIC
 Enhanced version of BIC
 The window growth function of CUBIC is a cubic function

 where C is a scaling factor, t is the elapsed time from the last

window reduction, Wmax is the window size just before the last
window reduction, and

 The window grows very fast upon a window reduction,

 As it gets closer to Wmax, its rate of increase reduces.
 Around Wmax, the window increment becomes almost zero
Delay Based Congestion Control
TCP Vegas
TCP Vegas utilizes the packet queuing delay as a
congestion signal to determine the rate at which to
send packets
Queuing delay (t) = RTT(t) – RTTmin
◦ RTT(t) = Current RTT
◦ RTTmin = Minimum RTT until current transmission
Uses 2 thresholds α and β (Positive values)
The congestion window updating rule of TCP Vegas
is given by
Advantages of TCP Vegas:
◦ Congestion window size is calibrated more smoothly
◦ CW remains same when the difference between the expected
and the actual rate is between the two thresholds α and β
◦ It’s a proactive algorithm
Disadvantages:
◦ TCP Vegas is inter-operated with other TCP versions like
Reno
 Degraded performance as Vegas reduces its sending rate before
Reno

◦ Inaccurate measurement of the actual round trip propagation

delay
FAST TCP
It is the high-speed version of Vegas
Delay based Congestion control mechanism
FAST operation is comprised by four modules:
◦ Data Control - determines which packets to transmit
◦ Window Control - determines how many packets to transmit
◦ Burstiness Control – determines when to transmit these packets
◦ Estimation - drives the other parts by providing necessary
information
Estimation
◦ It computes two pieces of feedback information for each data
packet sent
◦ From every ACK that arrives, it takes RTT sample and update:
 Average queueing delay
 RTTmin.

◦ For any negative ACK,

 it generates a loss indication for this data packet to the other
modules.

◦ Delay is computed as:

Window Control:
◦ Computes how much packet to send

where γ ϵ (0, 1] and a is a function of the current

window size and the average queuing delay