Modified TCP startup procedure for large bandwidth-delay networks

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Cheng, Rung-Shiang | Lin, Hui-Tang

Affiliations: Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. E-mail: chengrs@nsda.ee.ncku.edu.tw | Department of Electrical Engineering, Institute of Computer Communication Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. E-mail: htlin@mail.ncku.edu.tw

Abstract: This paper proposes an improvement to the TCP startup procedure in large bandwidth-delay networks. Current TCP congestion control algorithms may lead to the premature termination of the slow-start phase, resulting in an under-utilization of network resources and a corresponding degradation of the network performance. Consequently, this paper develops an algorithm which estimates the network conditions during the startup phase and rapidly expands the congestion window to match the available bandwidth. The simulation results confirm that the proposed TCP startup procedure improves the throughput of the modified TCP connection while remaining fair to other active TCP implementations in terms of bandwidth consumption.

Keywords: TCP, congestion control, large bandwidth-delay networks

DOI: 10.3233/JHS-2008-0330

Journal: Journal of High Speed Networks, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 37-50, 2008