1. Comparison between TCPWestwood and eXplicit Control Protocol (XCP) Jinsong Yang Shiva Navab CS218 Project - Fall 2003

2. Outline Traditional TCP shortcomings How TCPW and XCP address those shortcomings XCP: eXplicit Control Protocol TCPW: TCP Westwood Simulation Results

3. Traditional TCP Shortcomings in High BW*Delay Congestion Detection Based on receiving ACK (congested or not) No information on degree on congestion Reaction to Random Loss Throughput inversely proportional to RTT Unfairness in different RTT Reaching to the full link capacity in high BW AIMD  increase Cwind 1 per RTT Short Flows can cause instability in high BW Never exit slow start  exponential increase

4. Addressing TCP problems Congestion Control Mechanism TCPW Rate Estimate based on ACK rate Modification on the Sender XCP Based on INFORMATON on each ACK header Modification on Sender, Receiver and Router

5. TCP Westwood Enhance congestion control via Eligible Rate Estimates (ERE) Estimates are computed at the sender by sampling and exponential filtering methods ERE determined from ACK arrival process statistics and info in ACKs regarding amounts of bytes delivered ERE is used by sender to appropriately set cwnd and ssthresh after packet loss or during slow start

6. TCPW Algorithm  When three duplicate ACKs are detected:  set ssthresh=ERE*RTTmin (instead of ssthresh=cwin/2 as in Reno)  if (cwin > ssthresh) set cwin=ssthresh When a TIMEOUT expires: set ssthresh=ERE*RTTmin (instead of ssthresh=cwnd/2 as in Reno) and cwin=1 Note: RTTmin = min round trip delay experienced by the connection and is an estimate of the propagation time over the path (roundtrip)

7. eXplicit Control Protocol (XCP) Senders express their setting (cwnd, RTT) to routers, and routers express changes required to senders Exchange of information in packet header Recognizes two types of requirements for Congestion Control: Efficiency: Achieve high link utilization Allocation: Allocate bandwidth according to desired criteria; e.g. fairness, QoS, etc.

8. XCP Sender and Receiver Sender Receiver Similar to TCP receiver (send back ACK) But it copies the header of packet to ACK

9. XCP Router Approach: Decouple controls for efficiency and allocation Control aggregate traffic to achieve efficient link utilization Divide link bandwidth among connections to achieve desired criteria

10. Efficiency Controller Goal: Match aggregate input traffic to link capacity & drains the queue Algorithm(MIMD):  : Aggregate feedback (increase or decrease)  increases with an increase in spare BW  decreases with an increase in the router queue size; i.e. S: Spare Bandwidth & Q: Queue Size d: Current router’s estimate of RTT

11. Fairness Controller Goal: Divide  among flows to converge to fairness criteria Algorithm (AIMD): If  > 0 ⇒ Divide  equally between flows (regardless of current rate) If  < 0 ⇒ Divide  between flows in proportion to their current rates If  = 0 ⇒ bandwidth Shuffling Allocate & deallocate BW such that total traffic range doesn’t change y= input traffic in avg RTT

12. Fairness Controller Feedback field: Positive Feedback: Negative Feedback:

13. Addressing TCP problems Reaction to Error Loss TCP Reno Halves cwind for each loss (error or overflow) TCPW: A small fraction of isolated “randomly” lost packets does not impact the ERE value in TCPW Thus, cwnd = ERE * RTTmin remains unchanged XCP: Distinguishes Random loss and recovers fast Congestion drop will be preceded with a ACK (to tell the sender to decrease its cwind)

14. Addressing TCP problems Reaching to Full Link Capacity TCP Reno AIMD- increasing 1 per RTT TCPW Doesn’t reduce cwind drastically  catches up fast XCP Reaches the full capacity in several RTT based on the information about the spare bandwidth on the received ACK

15. Pros of XCP Stable for Bandwidth and delay Uses AQM Parameters independent of environment Scalable for number of flows No per flow state  keeps the state in the header Almost NO Packet Drop No slow start Reaches to full capacity fast Smaller queue size comparing to other queuing schemes

16. Cons of XCP Needs router participation deployment might prove to be difficult Malicious Sender can falsify the header and mess up the feedback calculation Issue: Uses average RTT Problem if RTT varies in a large range

17. Simulation Results-NS2 Topology Bottleneck single hop Parameters Bandwidth Delay Loss Rate Number of Flows

18. Throughput Comparison BW=20M Delay=10ms No Loss

19. Impact of Capacity Single Flow Different BW Delay= 10ms

20. Impact of Link Delay Different Delay BW= 20Mbps No Loss

21. Different Loss Rate BW=20 Mbps Delay= 10ms

22. Impact of Loss Rate Diff. Loss Rate BW= 20Mbps Delay= 10ms

23. Impact of Number of Flows BW=10 Mbps Delay=20ms

24. Impact of Web-Like Traffics BW 10 Mb, # of Short Flows 500, Start @ Random Time, Running for 1 sec,Link Delay 45 ms 500/30=17  10M/18=0.55M  XCP not friendly

25. Fairness Study – No Loss TCPW XCP BW=100 Mbps Delay=20 ms

26. Fairness Study – Different Delay BW=20 Mbps d1=10, d2=50, d3=100ms TCPW XCP

27. References [1]Katabi, D., M. Handley, C. Rohrs. Internet Congestion Control for Future High Bandwidth-Delay Product [2]M. Gerla, M. Y. Sanadidi, R. Wang, A. Zanella, C. Casetti, S. Mascolo, "TCP Westwood: Congestion Window Control Using Bandwidth Estimation", In Proceedings of IEEE Globecom 2001, Volume: 3, pp 1698-1702, San Antonio, Texas, USA, November 25-29, 2001 [3]Mascolo, S., C. Casetti, M. Geral, M. Y. Sanadidi, R. Wang. TCP Westwood: Bandwidth Estimation for Enhanced Transport over Wireless Links [4] Ren Wang, Massimo Valla, M. Y. Sanadidi, and Mario Gerla, Adaptive Bandwidth Share Estimation in TCP Westwood, In Proc. IEEE Globecom 2002, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., November 17-21, 2002 [5]Claudio Casetti, Mario Gerla, Saverio Mascolo, M.Y. Sansadidi, and Ren Wang, TCP Westwood: End-to-End Congestion Control for Wired/Wireless Networks, In Wireless Networks Journal 8, 467-479, 2002 More TCP Westwood papers on http://www.cs.ucla.edu/NRL/hpi/tcpw/http://www.cs.ucla.edu/NRL/hpi/tcpw/ [6] Network simulator ns-2. http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/nshttp://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns [7] Sally Floyd, HighSpeed TCP for Large Congestion Windows Internet draft draft-ietf- tsvwg-highspeed-01.txt, work in progress, August 2003. [8] Red parameters http://www.icir.org/floyd/red.html#parameteshttp://www.icir.org/floyd/red.html#parametes