Congestion control in IP/TCP internetworks

Abstract

Congestion control is a recognized problem in complex networks. We have discovered that the Department of Defense’s Internet Pro- tocol (IP) , a pure datagram protocol, and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), a transport layer protocol, when used together, are subject to unusual congestion problems caused by interactions between the transport and datagram layers. In particular, IP gateways are vulnerable to a phenomenon we call "congestion col- lapse", especially when such gateways connect networks of widely different bandwidth. We have developed solutions that prevent congestion