A new methodology for representation of TCP performance in multiconnection environments

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a new methodology for graphical representation of TCP performance, either in simulation or real tests, for scenarios where many connections carrying different amounts of data coexist simultaneously. The methodology is based on statistical evaluation of the connections' goodput and graphical representation of the results using three plotting styles, each optimized for a different analysis. The suitability of this methodology has been proven by analysing the performance of different TCP versions and configurations in a web-browsing simulated scenario.

REFERENCES

• 1: Kevin Fall , Sally Floyd, Simulation-based comparisons of Tahoe, Reno and SACK TCP, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.26 n.3, p.5-21, July 1996 [doi>10.1145/235160.235162]
• 2: Janey C. Hoe, Improving the start-up behavior of a congestion control scheme for TCP, Conference proceedings on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications, p.270-280, August 28-30, 1996, Palo Alto, California, United States
• 3: Matthew Mathis , Jamshid Mahdavi, Forward acknowledgement: refining TCP congestion control, Conference proceedings on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications, p.281-291, August 28-30, 1996, Palo Alto, California, United States
• 4: R. Morris, TCP behavior with many flows, Proceedings of the 1997 International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP '97), p.205, October 28-31, 1997
• 5: K. Poduri and K. Nichols, "Simulation studies of increased initial TCP window size," IETF, RFC 2415, September 1998.
• 6: Ethan Blanton , Mark Allman, On making TCP more robust to packet reordering, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.32 n.1, p.20-30, January 2002 [doi>10.1145/510726.510728]
• 7: Sally Floyd , Eddie Kohler, Internet research needs better models, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.33 n.1, p.29-34, January 2003 [doi>10.1145/774763.774767]
• 8: Walter Willinger , Vern Paxson , Murad S. Taqqu, Self-similarity and heavy tails: structural modeling of network traffic, A practical guide to heavy tails: statistical techniques and applications, Birkhauser Boston Inc., Cambridge, MA, 1998
• 9: Paul Barford , Azer Bestavros , Adam Bradley , Mark Crovella, Changes in Web client access patterns: Characteristics and caching implications, World Wide Web, v.2 n.1-2, p.15-28, 1999 [doi>10.1023/A:1019236319752]
• 10: Hyoung-Kee Choi , John O. Limb, A Behavioral Model of Web Traffic, Proceedings of the Seventh Annual International Conference on Network Protocols, p.327, October 31-November 03, 1999
• 11: J. Cao, W. S. Cleveland, Y. Gao, K. Jeffay, F. D. Smith, and M. Wei, "Stochastic models for generating synthetic http source traffic," Proceedings of INFOCOM 2004, 2004.
• 12: K. Farkas, P. Huang, B. Krishnamurthy, Y. Zhang, and J. Padhye, "Impact of TCP variants on http performance," in proceedings of International Workshop in High Speed Networking, may 2002.
• 13: Luigi A. Grieco , Saverio Mascolo, Performance evaluation and comparison of Westwood+, New Reno, and Vegas TCP congestion control, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.34 n.2, April 2004 [doi>10.1145/997150.997155]
• 14: Andrei Gurtov , Sally Floyd, Modeling wireless links for transport protocols, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.34 n.2, April 2004 [doi>10.1145/997150.997159]
• 15: Mark Allman , Aaron Falk, On the effective evaluation of TCP, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.29 n.5, October 1999 [doi>10.1145/505696.505703]
• 16: "MAWI working group traffic archive, wide project," 2003. {Online}. Available: http://tracer.csl.sony.co.jp/mawi/
• 17: The War between Mice and Elephants, Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Network Protocols, p.180, November 11-14, 2001
• 18: A. Reyes-Lecuona, E. González-Parada, E. Casilari, J. Casasola, and A. Diaz-Estrella, "A page-oriented WWW trafic model for wireless systems simulations," in Proceedings of 16th ITC, July 1999, pp. 1271--1280.
• 19: Anja Feldmann , Anna C. Gilbert , Polly Huang , Walter Willinger, Dynamics of IP traffic: a study of the role of variability and the impact of control, Proceedings of the conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communication, p.301-313, August 30-September 03, 1999, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
• 20: W. Willinger and V. Paxon, "Where mathematics meets the Internet," Notices of the American Mathematical Society, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 961--970, September 1998.
• 21: Bruce A. Mah, An Empirical Model of HTTP Network Traffic, Proceedings of the INFOCOM '97. Sixteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. Driving the Information Revolution, p.592, April 09-11, 1997
• 22: S. Floyd and T. Henderson, "The NewReno modification to TCP's fast recovery algorithm," IETF, RFC 2582, April 1999.
• 23: M. Allman and S. Floyd, "Enhancing TCP loss recovery using limited transmit," IETF, RFC 3042, January 2001.
• 24: S. Floyd, "Validation experiences with the ns simulator," in In Proceedings of the DARPA/NIST Network Simulation Validation Workshop, may 1999.
• 25: V. Jacobson, Congestion avoidance and control, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.18 n.4, p.314-329, August 1988
• 26: M. Allman, V. Paxson, and W. Stevens, "TCP congestion control," IETF, RFC 2581, April 1999.
• 27: M. Mathis, J. Mahdavi, S. Floyd, and A. Romanow, "TCP selective acknowledgment options," IETF, RFC 2018, October 1996.
• 28: M. Allman, S. Floyd, and C. Partridge, "Increasing TCP initial window," IETF, RFC 2414, September 1998.
• 29: M. Allman, "Increasing TCP initial window," IETF, RFC 3390, October 2002.
• 30: J. Postel, "The TCP Maximum Segment Size and related topics," IETF, RFC 879, November 1983.
• 31: Mark Allman , Chris Hayes , Shawn Ostermann, An evaluation of TCP with larger initial windows, ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, v.28 n.3, p.41-52, July 1998 [doi>10.1145/293927.295114]
• 32: U. Ayesta and K. Avrachenkov, "The effect of the initial window size and limited transmit algorithm on the transient behaviour of tcp transfers," in Proceedings of The 15th ITC Specialist Seminar on Internet Traffic Engineering and Traffic Management, july 2002.
• 33: Jitendra Pahdye , Sally Floyd, On inferring TCP behavior, Proceedings of the 2001 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications, p.287-298, August 2001, San Diego, California, United States
• 34: V. Jacobson, C. Leres, and S. McCanne, "tcpdump, lawrence berkeley national labs, ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/, 1989," 1989.
• 35: S. Ostermann, "tcptrace: a tcpdump file analysis tool," 1996. {Online}. Available: http://jarok.cs.ohiou.edu/software/tcptrace/tcptrace.html

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.5 Local and Wide-Area Networks
          Subjects: Internet (e.g., TCP/IP)

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.1 Network Architecture and Design
          Subjects: Network topology
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Modeling techniques

General Terms:
Algorithms