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Congestion Control in TCP

The document discusses TCP congestion control, highlighting its importance in managing reliable communication over unreliable networks. It outlines various approaches, including end-to-end and network-assisted congestion control, and details mechanisms like Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, and Fast Retransmit. Historical context is provided, along with the evolution of TCP congestion control strategies proposed by Van Jacobson and others.

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5 views24 pages

Congestion Control in TCP

The document discusses TCP congestion control, highlighting its importance in managing reliable communication over unreliable networks. It outlines various approaches, including end-to-end and network-assisted congestion control, and details mechanisms like Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, and Fast Retransmit. Historical context is provided, along with the evolution of TCP congestion control strategies proposed by Van Jacobson and others.

Uploaded by

Feriel Bio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Congestion Control in TCP

Introduction
Many very important networking issues exist at the TCP layer:
For instance:
• How to reliable communicate over an unreliable channel
• How should a sender restrain itself: flow and congestion control
• How to agree on the action to take for lost, delayed, reordered
messages
• How to deal with large data: fragmentation and reassembly
• How to guarantee performance when resources shared
TCP segment
32 bits
URG: urgent data counting
(generally not used) source port # dest port #
by bytes
sequence number of data
ACK: ACK #
valid acknowledgement (not segments!)
U A Pnumber
head not
PSH: push data now len used
R S F Receive window
(generally not used) # bytes
checksum Urg data pnter
rcvr willing
RST, SYN, FIN: to accept
Options (variable length)
connection estab
(setup, teardown
commands)
application
Internet data
checksum (variable length)
(as in UDP)
Congestion Control:
• Congestion: informally: “too many sources sending too much
data too fast for network to handle”

• Different from flow control!

• Manifestations:
– Packet loss (buffer overflow at routers)
– Increased end-to-end delays (queuing in router buffers)

• Results in unfairness and poor utilization of network resources


– Resources used by dropped packets (before they were lost)
– Retransmissions
– Poor resource allocation at high load
Historical Perspective:
• October 1986, Internet had its first congestion collapse

• Link LBL to UC Berkeley


– 400 yards, 3 hops, 32 Kbps
– throughput dropped to 40 bps
– factor of ~1000 drop!

• Van Jacobson proposes TCP Congestion Control:


– Achieve high utilization
– Avoid congestion
– Share bandwidth
Congestion Control: Approaches
• Goal: Throttle senders as needed to ensure load on the
network is “reasonable”

• End-end congestion control:


– No explicit feedback from network
– Congestion inferred from end-system observed loss,
delay
– This is the approach taken by TCP

• Network-assisted congestion control:


– routers provide feedback to end systems
– single bit indicating congestion (e.g., ECN)
– explicit rate sender should send at
TCP Congestion Control: Overview

• End-end control (no help from the network)


• Limit the number of packets in the network to window W
• Roughly,

W
rate = Bytes/sec
RTT

• W is dynamic, function of perceived network congestion


TCP Congestion Controls
• Tahoe (Jacobson 1988)
– Slow Start
– Congestion Avoidance
– Fast Retransmit

• Reno (Jacobson 1990)


– Fast Recovery

• SACK

• Vegas (Brakmo & Peterson 1994)


– Delay and loss as indicators of congestion
Slow Start:
• “Slow Start” is used to reach the receiver
sender
equilibrium state cwnd
• Initially: W = 1 (slow start) 1 data
segment
• On each successful ACK:
ACK
WW+1 2
• Exponential growth of W
each RTT: W  2 x W
3
• Enter CA when 4
W >= ssthresh
• ssthresh: window size after which 5
6
TCP cautiously probes for bandwidth 7
8
Congestion Avoidance:
• Starts when sender receiver
W  ssthresh 1 data
• On each successful ACK: segment

ACK
2
W  W+ 1/W
• Linear growth of W each
RTT:
3
WW+1

4
CA: Additive Increase, Multiplicative Decrease

• “additive increase” in the absence of loss events

• After loss event, decrease congestion window by half –


“multiplicative decrease”
– ssthresh = W/2
– Enter Slow Start
Detecting Packet Loss:

• Assumption: loss indicates 1


0
1
congestion 1
1
2
X
1
3
1
4
1
• Option 1: time-out 5
1
6
1

– Waiting for a time-out can 1


0
1
7

be long! 1
1
1
1
1
1
• Option 2: duplicate ACKs 1

– How many? At least 3.


Sender Receiver
Fast Retransmit:
• Wait for a timeout is quite long

• Immediately retransmits after 3 dupACKs without waiting


for timeout

• Adjusts ssthresh
ssthresh  W/2

• Enter Slow Start


W=1
How to Set the TCP Timeout Value?

• Longer than RTT


– but RTT varies

• Too short: premature timeout


– unnecessary retransmissions

• Too long: slow reaction to segment loss


How to Estimate RTT?

• SampleRTT: measured time from segment


transmission until ACK receipt
– ignore retransmissions

• SampleRTT will vary, want estimated RTT


“smoother”
– average several recent measurements, not just
current SampleRTT
TCP Round-Trip Time and Timeout:

EstimatedRTT = (1- )*EstimatedRTT + *SampleRTT

• EWMA
• influence of past sample decreases
exponentially fast
• typical value:  = 0.125

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