An adaptive AIMD congestion control protocol for communication networks

Abstract

We present a new adaptive TCP protocol for the control of congestion in communication networks. The key innovative idea in our protocol is to combine results from Probenius-Perron theory with online adaptation to realise a TCP variant that: (i) allocates the network pipe fairly amongst competing flows; (ii) coexists with other TCP variants; (iii) responds rapidly to changes in available bandwidth; and (iv) which strives to achieve a high data rate through the bottleneck link. When implemented, the new protocol requires only sender-side modification of the standard window congestion control scheme and is transparent to network buffers and network sources operating other TCP-variants. Results from the network simulator NS are presented to illustrate the key features of our scheme. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2004.